I have learned from a well-placed source that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who killed one soldier and wounded another at a a Little Rock military recruiting center today, and who faces charges of terrorism as well as first-degree murder, has recently returned from Yemen, where he studied jihad with an Islamic scholar there.

Apparently the Islamic scholar under whom this American convert to Islam studied was yet another misunderstander of Islam's true, peaceful teachings.

A Muslim convert who said he was opposed to the U.S. military shot two soldiers outside an Arkansas recruiting station, killing one, police said Monday."This individual appears to have been upset with the military, the Army in particular, and that's why he did what he did," Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said in a phone interview.

"He has converted to (Islam) here in the past few years," Hastings said. "We're not completely clear on what he was upset about. He had never been in the military.

"He saw them standing there and drove up and shot them. That's what he said."

Hastings identified the man in custody as Carlos Bledsoe, 24, of Little Rock, who goes by the name of Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad.

Police Chief Stuart Thomas said William Long, 24, of Conway was killed. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, of Jacksonville was wounded and in stable condition, Thomas said.

The soldiers wore fatigues, had recently completed basic training and volunteered to help attract others to the military, Thomas said. He said the gunman targeted the military but was not believed to be part of a broader scheme.

Thomas said Muhammad would be charged with first-degree murder, plus 15 counts of committing a terroristic act. He said those counts result from the gunfire occurring near other people.

Hastings said the attacker pulled up in a car outside the Army-Navy recruiting office around 10:30 a.m. CT and fired at the soldiers outside.

According to the Associated Press, the vehicle was stopped on Interstate 630 a short time later, and the suspect was taken into custody. Police found an assault rifle in the vehicle.

The recruiting office is part of a shopping center at a commercialized intersection.

Jim Richardson, the manager at a drug store around the corner from the Army-Navy center, said people at the store didn't realize anything was amiss until they heard sirens outside. "Nobody heard any gunshots," Richardson said.

Lt. Col. Thomas Artis of the Oklahoma City Recruiting Battalion, which oversees the Little Rock office, said the victims were not regular recruiters. He said they were serving two weeks in the Little Rock office.

As part of the Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program, the soldiers were sent to "talk to friends, folks in the local area. They can show the example, 'Here's where I was, and here is where I am,' " Artis said.

A senior U.S. official tells FOX News that more targets were found on the computer of a man charged in the fatal shooting at a military recruiting center in Arkansas — suggesting the accused gunman may have been part of a larger plot to attack military targets and may not have been acting alone.

Officers found maps to Jewish organizations, a Baptist church, a child care center, a post office and military recruiting centers in the southeastern U.S., New York and Philadelphia, according to a joint FBI-Homeland Security intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press.

After Monday's attack outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, detectives searched a computer linked to suspect Abdulhakim Muhammad, and discovered research into multiple sites in different states, according to the memo.

Muhammad, 23, a Muslim convert who previously was known as Carlos Bledsoe, pleaded not guilty to capital murder in the deadly suburban shopping complex shooting.

Authorities said he targeted soldiers "because of what they had done to Muslims in the past."

Private William Long, 23, was killed and Private Quinton I. Ezeagwula, 18, was wounded. Both completed basic training within the past two weeks and had never seen combat. Ezeagwula was in stable condition at a hospital.

The latest information seemed to contradict a local police official's denial earlier Tuesday that the shooting was part of a larger conspiracy, though details of possible accomplices and their involvement weren't immediately disclosed.

Muhammad is being held without bond and is due to make his first court appearance Wednesday.

Muhammad, a U.S. citizen, is accused of carrying out a targeted attack against U.S. forces because of "political and religious motives" and already had been under investigation by the FBI at the time of the shootings.

An FBI joint terrorism task force based in the southern U.S. reportedly had been tracking Muhammad after he traveled to Yemen and was arrested and jailed there for using a Somali passport, an official told The Associated Press. The probe had been in its early stages and based on Muhammad's trip to Yemen, ABC News reported.

While there, Muhammad, who was born and raised in Tennessee, studied jihad with an Islamic scholar, according to Jihadwatch.org. He moved to Little Rock in April.

At Tuesday's court hearing, Deputy Prosecutor Scott Duncan said Muhammad told investigators that "he would have killed more soldiers had they been in the parking lot."

Long and Ezeagwula were targeted as they stood outside the recruiting center smoking cigarettes.

Muhammad, wearing a dark blue jail uniform with brown plastic sandals, sat with his hands in his lap before Little Rock District Judge Alice Lightle. He did not say anything during the brief hearing.

Investigators described the killing as one motivated by politics and religion: A Muslim convert upset with the U.S. military drove to a recruiting center and opened fire.

Muhammad was not part of any organized terrorist group, nor was his attack part of a larger conspiracy, Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said on Tuesday.

Interviews with police show that the suspect "probably had political and religious motives for the attack," Thomas said. "We believe that it's associated with his disagreement over the military operations."

Muhammad told authorities that he approached the recruiting center in Little Rock by car on Monday and started shooting at two soldiers in uniform, according to a police report.

"He saw them standing there and drove up and shot them," Lt. Terry Hastings told the AP. "That's what he said."

The two victims had completed basic training within the past two weeks and were not regular recruiters, said Lt. Col. Thomas F. Artis of the Oklahoma City Recruiting Battalion, which oversees the Little Rock office.

Witnesses told police that a man inside a black vehicle pulled up outside the recruiting center and opened fire about 10:30 a.m. Long fell onto the sidewalk outside the center, while Ezeagwula was able to crawl toward its door.

Muhammad was arrested along an interstate highway moments after the shootings, authorities said.

Police said an assault rifle and other weapons were found in Muhammad's car when he was arrested.

The accused shooter's father, Melvin Bledsoe, hung up on a reporter who called about his son's arrest Monday night.

FOX News' Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Speaking at the University of Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama said that Americans are indebted to Islam for the great contributions Muslims have made to the history and development of the United States.

“I know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” Mr. Obama told the throng of unenlightened Muslims. “The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. . . And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.”

Mr. Obama went on to say: “They [Muslims] have fought in our wars. They have served in our government. They have stood for civil rights. They have started businesses. They have taught at our universities. They’ve excelled in our sports arenas. They’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building and lit the Olympic torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same holy Koran that one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library.”

No one at the Egyptian University or the international media took issue with the President’s bizarre interpretation of American history, let alone his confusion of the Nation of Islam (the religion of Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X) that bears scant similarity to orthodox Islam. The Nation of Islam teach that Allah in the flesh was a bona fide nutcase named Wallace Fard and that Eli Muhammad, a conman with a tested IQ of 70 and not the Prophet Muhammad, was the true last prophet of Allah.

Let’s set the record straight once and for all.

Sorry, Barack Hussein, but there were no Muslims among the passengers on the Mayflower or the settlers at Jamestown. Muslims were conspicuously absent from the ranks of George Washington’s Army of the Revolution and played no role in the creation of the American republic - - save for the fact that the new country’s first declaration of war was against the forces of Islam in the form of the Barbary pirates.1

Despite popular folklore, few Muslims numbered among the 12 million black Africans who were shipped to the New World from the 17th to 19th centuries. The Muslims, in fact, were not the slaves but the slave traders. Senegalese educator Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow has written that in 1587 a shipload of Moriscos (Spanish Moors) landed in a coastal area of South Carolina. The Moors, he contends, migrated to the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina where they established colonies.2 In reality, this is pure speculation. There is not a scintilla of archival or archaeological evidence to support this claim.

This is not to say that no Muslim slaves were transported to the colonies. Two such slaves - - Ayuiba Suleiman Diallo and Omar ibn Said - - were brought to America is 1731 but both were returned to Africa in 1734.3 In a Herculean effort to materialize at least one Muslim living in America before the Civil War, Muslims in America, an Islamic website, point to the name of Mahomet, the great grandson of Uncas, the founder of the Mohegan tribe, on a gravestone in Norwich, Connecticut.4 The name of this Native America, they argue, resembles that of the prophet, and, therefore, he must have been a convert to Islam.

In a similar example of straining at gnats, the compilers of The Collections and Stories of American Muslims, a non-profit organization, claim that Peter Salem, a former slave who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, must have been a Muslim since “Salem” bears an etymological resemblance to “Salaam,” the Arabic word for peace.5

For additional proof, the compilers turn to folklore, such as the story of Old Tom, a slave at a plantation in Georgia, who allegedly uttered, “Allah is God and Mohammed his Prophet” on his death-bed - - and the apocryphal tale of “Old Lizzy,” a slave from Edgefield County, who reportedly said, “Christ built His first church in Mecca.”6

Surprisingly, there is no record of any Islamic American among the enlisted and conscripted forces of World War I, let alone among the blue and grey armies of the Civil War. The great migrations that lasted from 1865 to 1925 brought 35,000,000 people to the New World: 4,500,000 from Ireland, 4,000,000 from Great Britain, 6,000,000 from central Europe, 2,000,000 from the Scandinavian countries, 5,000,000 from Italy, 8,000,000 from Eastern Europe, and 3,000,000 from the Balkans. But the number of Muslims who came here from the Middle East was statistically nil.7

In 1960, aside from the temples of the Nation of Islam, the only mosques in the United States were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dearborn, Michigan, and Washington DC (which opened in 1957) - - and all three professed less than 200 active members. Four other cities contained miniature mosques with less than fifty members.8

Oh, yes, Jefferson did possess a copy of the Koran which Keith Ellison, our first Muslim Congressman, used to make his oath of office. But what was Jefferson opinion of Islam? Did he believe the Muslim religion represented a salubrious influence in world affairs? Far from it. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, then US ambassador to France, and John Adams, then US Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Barbary Pirates based on Congress’ vote of funding. To the US Congress these two future Presidents later reported the reasons for the Muslims’ hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

“...that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Days after statement, DOJ files suit against NJ county on behalf of MuslimBy creeping When was the last time the Department of inJustice filed a suit on behalf of say, Christianity or Judaism…just a day after announcing on its website it would protect that specific religion while not mentioning anything about any other religion.

“The President’s pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

According to FBI crime statistics from 2007, the last data set available, it’s not Muslims who are most in need of favored status and protection from the DOJ:

JERUSALEM – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano swore in to her official advisory council the head of an Arab American organization whose officials have labeled deadly anti-U.S. jihadists as "heroes" and opposed referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC, also has close ties to anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, whose association with President Obama – first exposed by WND – stirred controversy during last year's presidential campaign.

The ADC also leads the opposition to domestic anti-terrorism measures taken after the 9-11 attacks, such as watch lists, background check delays for visas and an initiative meant to more comprehensively screen visitors from select Mideast countries or specific individuals labeled as possible national security threats.

Last week, Napolitano swore in Damascus-born Kareem Shora, the ADC's national executive director, to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, an outside-the-department group of national security experts that advises the secretary. Shora is the first Arab rights advocate on the panel.

At the ceremony in Albequrque, Shora reportedly recounted how he watched with his immigrant father Obama's address last week to the Muslim world. Shora said his father cried when he heard Obama's message of reconciliation.

ADC glorifies terrorism

The ADC takes an openly anti-Israel line. Its official material has accused the Jewish state of "apartheid" and "atrocities" against the Palestinians. In 2006, a local ADC group drew up a petition calling on the U.S. to stop providing Israel with weapons.

In 1994, during one of the main peaks of Hamas suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, then-ADC President Hamzi Moghrabi said, "I will not call [Hamas] a terrorist organization. I mean, I know many people in Hamas. They are very respectable. … I don't believe Hamas, as an organization, is a violent organization."

"I find it shocking," Maksoud said, "that [one] would include Hezbollah in … [an] inventory of Middle East 'terrorist' groups."

In 2000, new ADC President Hussein Ibish characterized Hezbollah as "a disciplined and responsible liberation force."

When Israel released Hezbollah prisoners in early 2004, Imad Hamad, ADC's Midwest Regional Director, openly celebrated the freedom of "the heroes."

Besides its deadly terrorism against Israel, Hezbollah distinguishes itself as second only to al-Qaida among terror groups responsible for killing the most Americans. It's responsible for such deadly attacks as the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 299 servicemen, including 220 U.S. Marines.

ADC linked to Khalidi

The ADC is linked to Columbia University's Khalidi, who spoke at several of the organization's events. At one speech, in June 2002, the New York Sun documented how Khalidi appeared to condone the killing of armed Israelis.

"Killing civilians is a war crime. It's a violation of international law. They are not soldiers. They're civilians, they're unarmed," Khalidi said in a recorded address. "The ones who are armed, the ones who are soldiers, the ones who are in occupation, that's different. That's resistance."

The ADC also has collaborated on numerous projects with the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, an organization founded by Khalidi's wife Mona, and which WND first reported received start-up funds from a nonprofit, the Woods Fund, on which Obama served as a paid director.

The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant community, worked on projects supporting open boarders and education for illegal aliens. Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line. The organization co-sponsored anti-Israel projects and exhibits.

Khalidi, an apologist for PLO terrorism, holds the position of Columbia's Edward Said professorship of Arab Studies. Said, a well-known far-leftist intellectual and apologist for Palestinian terrorism, served on an advisory counsel to the ADC.

ADC opposes anti-terrorism screening

According to the ADC charter, the organization seeks to "empower Arab Americans; defend the civil rights of all people of Arab heritage in the U.S.; promote civic participation; and encourage a balanced U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

The organization has actively lobbied against the Patriot Act and was reportedly instrumental in scaling back some of the restrictions of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System program, or NSEERS. Shora was personally involved in those efforts.

The NSEERS required persons whose nationality identifies them as a possible security risk to submit to control processes governed by the Department of Justice. NSEERS also targeted specific individuals labeled as possible national security threats, at times making them undergo fingerprinting, photographing and registration.

A global Islamic extremist political organization hosted its first organized conference in the United States on Sunday. Hosted by the group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the conference, titled "Fall of Capitalism and Rise of Islam," was hosted at a Hilton hotel in Chicago.

The conference was free to the public and attracted some 700 people, according to a report by Chicago's CBS 2 network.

The organization, whose name means The Liberation Party, is known for being a political, non-violent Sunni movement formed as a reaction to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The party was established in Jerusalem in 1953 by Palestinian intellectuals. The leader at the time, Taqiuddin an-Nabhani, established the organization as an ideological political party striving to create an Islamic caliphate, i.e. an ideal, unified Muslim state.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is "a political party whose ideology is Islam," according to the group's official Web site.

The group is the "first Islamic radical organization to adopt a global policy," said Reuven Paz, the director of Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM). The party has established centers across the world, but has been banned in much of the Arab world and central Asia because the group has been seen as an opposition to Islamic governments already in place, he explained in an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Paz said that though the organization has a strong base in London, the US branch was created in the 1970s in states with large Muslim populations.

Kamran Bokhari, STRATFOR's director of Middle East analysis, explained that until this conference, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir has been largely dormant in the US, but he believes the group is trying to make a comeback and reestablish a presence.

"They are trying to make use of the financial crisis and show that capitalism is in decline and Islam is the answer," he said. "They decided it's the right time to come back - the hunt against Islam is not as intense as it used to be."

He explained that the organization is serious about theology, idealogy and methodology. "Unlike organizations like al-Qaeda, they do not use force. They are more into doing conferences and holding study circles to shape public opinion," he said.

Paz explained that the conference is taking place in the United States because the group is taking advantage of freedom of speech. Most of the members are young intellectual elites, he said.

Though anti-Israel, anti-Shi'ite and anti-Western, the organization is not at all violent, but is seen as a threat for having unique doctrines and attracting followers to demonstrations, said Paz.

"The group is a minority in the Muslim world, but they are very vocal. They can be very extreme, but never violent," Paz said. "They are far from the present doctrines of al-Qaeda."

In a phone interview with CBS News, conference deputy spokesman Reza Imam stressed that Hizb ut-Tahrir does not call for violence or spread radical ideas. He said the group has not been accused of being tied to violent activities.

According to the organization's Web site, Hizb-ut-Tahrir aims to educate Muslims as an "entity that seeks to change people's thoughts through intelligent discussion and debate," and "does not accept forcing people or societies to change by means of violence and terror."

Imam said the conference was hosted to highlight the disintegration of capitalism during the global financial crisis.

"Our organization is an intellectual organization, so anybody who subscribes to its ideas is a member," said Imam. "Our currency is ideas...it is not a card-carrying type of organization," he added.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has no headquarters in the US and no leader, said Imam, adding that it has a strong presence in Chicago.

The conference was originally scheduled to be held at Al Aqsa Islamic School in Bridgeview, Ill., but the school canceled the event. According to CBS News, school officials felt the group misrepresented their goals when they asked to use the venue.This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443871649&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Giving Ramadan a Drumroll in Brooklyn at 4 A.M. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesMohammad Boota has been drumming in Brooklyn to wake Muslim worshipers during Ramadan since 2002.

Published: September 12, 2009 A few hours before dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, a middle-aged man rolls out of bed in Brooklyn, dons a billowy red outfit and matching turban, climbs into his Lincoln Town Car, drives 15 minutes, pulls out a big drum and — there on the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood — starts to play.

Mohammad Boota plays in 20-second bursts outside Pakistani businesses in Brooklyn, as he did at Bismillah Food last month. He has learned that not everyone appreciates his services. The man, Mohammad Boota, is a Ramadan drummer. Every morning during the holy month, which ends on Sept. 21, drummers stroll the streets of Muslim communities around the world, waking worshipers so they can eat a meal before the day’s fasting begins.

But New York City, renowned for welcoming all manner of cultural traditions, has limits to its hospitality. And so Mr. Boota, a Pakistani immigrant, has spent the past several years learning uncomfortable lessons about noise-complaint hot lines, American profanity and the particular crankiness of non-Muslims rousted from sleep at 3:30 a.m.

“Everywhere they complain,” he said. “People go, like, ‘What the hell? What you doing, man?’ They never know it’s Ramadan.”

Mr. Boota, 53, who immigrated in 1992 and earns his living as a limousine driver, began waking Brooklynites in 2002. At first he moved freely around the borough, picking a neighborhood to work each Ramadan morning.

Not everyone was thrilled, he said. People would throw open their windows and yell at him, or call the police, who, he said, advised him kindly to move along.

As the years went by, he and his barrel drum were effectively banned from one neighborhood after another. He now restricts himself to a short stretch of Coney Island Avenue where many Pakistanis live.

Fearing that even that limited turf may be threatened real estate for him, he has modified his approach even further — playing at well below his customary volume, for only about 15 to 20 seconds in each location, and only once every three or four days.

The complaints have stopped, he said. But as he reflected on his early years of drumming in the streets of New York — before he knew better — wistfulness seeped into his voice. He rattled off the places he used to play, however briefly: “Avenue C, Newkirk Avenue, Ditmas, Foster, Avenue H, I, J and Neptune Avenue.”

“You know,” he reluctantly concluded, “in the United States you can’t do anything without a permit.”

Mr. Boota wants to be a good American, and a good Muslim. “I don’t want to bother other communities’ people,” he said. “Just the Pakistani people.”

Several prominent Muslim organizations in New York said they knew of no other drummers who played on Ramadan mornings. But while the custom’s usefulness has been largely eclipsed by the invention of the alarm clock, it has hung on in many places. Indeed, Mr. Boota said he continues the practice, in spite of the challenges and resistance, as much to keep a tradition alive as to feed a cultural yen of his countrymen.

“They’re waiting for me,” he said.

The daily Ramadan fast runs from the start of dawn to dusk. So shortly after 3 one recent morning, Mr. Boota left his wife, Mumtaz, as she prepared a predawn meal in their Coney Island apartment. About 15 minutes later he pulled his Lincoln to a stop in front of Bismillah Food, a small Pakistani grocery store on Coney Island Avenue, near Foster Avenue. Several men were inside; taxicabs parked outside suggested their occupation.

In one fluid motion, Mr. Boota popped the trunk, cut the motor, leapt out, hoisted the drum’s strap over his shoulder, greeted the owner — “Salaam aleikum” — and, standing in the sidewalk penumbra of the shop’s fluorescent light, began playing.

The men came to the door. “He’s a very popular man here,” one of them said, nodding at Mr. Boota, who wore his usual performance attire: a traditional shalwar kameez, a loose two-piece outfit, elaborately embroidered with gold thread.

Mr. Boota wielded his two drumsticks in a galloping clangor that echoed off the facades of the darkened buildings.

After about 20 seconds, he ended his performance with a punctuative smack of the taut drum heads. There was an exchange of mumbled pleasantries in Arabic, the men moved back inside the store, and as quickly as he had arrived, Mr. Boota was behind the wheel of his car again, driving a block south to another Pakistani-owned business.

“A few seconds,” he said, as he cut the engine again. “Ten, 15 seconds, and bye-bye.”

For the next 20 minutes, he repeated this drill outside three Pakistani restaurants, four convenience and grocery stores and a service station.

No one complained — audibly, at least. And a close watch on nearby windows along the street revealed no annoyed, or even curious, residents.

Drumming, Mr. Boota said, is a family tradition. He is a seventh-generation ceremonial drummer and is now training his 20-year-old son, Sher, one of eight children. In addition to his Ramadan reveilles, Mr. Boota plays at Pakistani weddings, birthday parties, graduation celebrations and other events.

“A lot of happiness hours!” he exclaimed.

During his rounds the next night, he stopped at a Pakistani-run service station and wandered with his drum into the service bay. He wanted to demonstrate the full capacity of his instrument. One of the mechanics slid the heavy doors shut, and Mr. Boota started to play at full volume, unleashing deafening sheets of sound. For three solid minutes he pounded out relentless, churning polyrhythms that filled the space like smoke.

Mr. Boota was obviously reveling in the power of his drum after a week of frustrated Ramadan duty. As the ringing in the listeners’ ears faded, he headed back to his car.

‘Islam is coming to America the same way Christianity came to Rome… whether they like it or not. We talk about the Islamic State of North America by 2050… The people of Hamas and Hizbullah are good people; they don’t deserve condemnation, they do good things.” – Imam Abdul Musa of Washington, D.C. “Our time has come!” proclaims Islam on Capitol Hill, a new non-profit, tax-exempt corporation that is seeking millions in sponsorship.

And the time for the coming out party for Muslims in America is September 25, when over 50,000 adherents of the fabled “religion of peace” are expected to gather on the west front of the U.S. Capitol for a national prayer gathering.The organizers of the event – - called “the Day of Islamic Unity” – - are expecting a crowd of 50,000 from mosques throughout the country, including a Muslim contingency from Alaska.

The Muslims are expected to pray for “the soul of America” from 4:00 AM until 7:00 PM with state-of-the-art audio amplifiers, so that their cries will resonate throughout the Lincoln and Washington memorials and the halls of Congress.The first national gathering of Muslims will take place by the site where U.S. Presidents have been inaugurated since 1981.Key planners of the event, including Hassen Abdellah, say that the inspiration for the event came from Barack Obama’s speech at the University of Cairo in which U.S. President said that Islam is an integral part of American society.

“For the first time in my lifetime,” Mr. Abdellah says of the Obama speech. “I heard someone of his stature speaking about Islam and Muslims not in an adversarial sense, but in the sense of being welcome and acknowledging we are integral citizens in the society — that we’re gainfully employed; we’re educated.”

The Traditional Values Coalition has decried the gathering by saying: “The Day of Islamic Unity is a dangerous event because it will galvanize Islamists into an army that will subvert our institutions and our way of life. Islam isn’t simply a religion; it is a totalitarian geo-political system that seeks total world domination. It seeks to impose Shariah Law on all peoples – by the sword.”

Dr. Paul L. Williams Most recent columnsPaul L. Williams, Ph.D., is the author of such best-selling books as The Day of Islam, The Al Qaeda Connection, Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Crusades and The Vatican Exposed. An award-winning journalist, he is a frequent guest on such national news networks as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NPR. Williams operates from his

Well the organizers of this "event" are known anit-semites, anti- Christians, defenders of suicide bombers, defenders of terrorists acts on the US, and not interested in peace as much as they claim. I doubt they condemn terrorist acts, killing murdering and bigotry coming from their side like they do when they criticize us.I have some Muslim patients who blend in with the rest of us and seem to all appearances to be American, but I dont know about some of the more "radical" ones.

For example:

Abdul Alim MusaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchImam Abdul Alim Musa (born 1945; Clarence Reams) is a Muslim activist and director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington, D.C.. He is a member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and a well-known speaker around the world. He is founder and director of As-Sabiqun.Reams was born in Arkansas in 1945 but grew up in Oakland, California during the 1960s. It was during this period that he associated with H. Rap Brown (Imam Jamil Al-Amin), who later converted to Islam.

Having set up a drug dealing operation operation in Colombia, Musa was arrested on charges including heroin smuggling, currency smuggling and assaulting a federal agent. After evading the authorities for several years, Musa fled to Algeria, where he came in contact with several exiled Black Panther leaders such as Eldridge Cleaver. After returning to the US, he turned himself in and was eventually incarcerated at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., among other institutions.[1]

While in prison, Musa converted to orthodox Islam. Musa suported the 1979 Iranian revolution, believing that it would lead to the revival of Islam.[1]

Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Musa publicly expressed his support for the Islamic Republic and its leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Since the early 1980s he made several visits to Iran as a representative of Muslims in the United States and a supporter of the Islamic revival. He made connections with a wide array of Muslim leaders during the decade - both Sunni and Shia - and stressed that unity was a primary objective for the Islamic movements success. His references the writings of Malcolm X, Ayatollah Khomeini, Sayyid Qutb, Maulana Maududi, and Kalim Siddiqui. New members of the group are encouraged to individually familiarize themselves with the works of these political Islamic thinkers in addition to daily classes and lectures on classical Islamic studies, Arabic, hadith and Quran.

[edit] AntisemitismAccording to the Anti-Defamation League, Musa "propagates a radical and anti-Semitic ideology." They quote him as saying “Who ran the slave trade…who funded [it]? You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews…It was the Jewish bankers…in Vienna, with pockets full of money, funding and insuring, that’s who did it…. you can’t tell us about no holocaust. Between the African Americans and the Native Americans, everybody else’s stuff was small potatoes.” [2]

According to Benjamin Ginsberg, student groups The Associated Students of the University of Washignton and the Black Students Commission sponsored "a vehemently Anti-semitic" speech by Musa, in which he asserted that America was controlled by Jews and that "Yahuds are the enemy of humanity." [3]

Critics have suggested that he promotes anti-Semitism in his speeches, which he defends are directed at Zionist supporters of Israel and not at Jewish people in general, although some of his statements suggest otherwise, such as: “Al-Amin [a convicted murderer] …turned his ideas, his belief in Islam, into practical solutions for society. And they can’t stand that. Just like our brother said: the Zionist are the same today as they was then. In those days [in Arabia before the ascendance of Islam] they controlled the liquor market in Madina… and the Zionists kept the Arab leaders broke and drunk…the yahud [Jew, in Arabic] were seating back and had each one of them [Arab clans] fighting each other because the leaders was both drunken and they was all in owe (sic) to the same Yahud… he was manipulating the Arabs…then Islam came [and abolished riba, or interest]."[4]

[edit] Recent ActivitiesDuring a rally in July 1999 Musa displayed a cashier's check made out to "Hamas, Palestine," to protest the 1996 U.S. law which declared Hamas a terrorist organization.[5] Musa said that "I would love to have a case in court with the FBI. I would love for them to arrest me on any trumped-up charges." Musa later commented that "I tried to get a case several years ago. We had a demonstration. I waved a check for Hamas, cashier's check, by the way. And I said, 'I'm donating this to Hamas.' Then I waited for them to arrest me. They didn't arrest me. So I put the thing back in the bank."[1]

At the January 21, 2001 event titled Shaping Our Perspective: Our Role in a Changing World, sponsored by Muslim Students Association at UCLA, Musa is quoted as stating: "If you were to say that the Soviet Union was wiped off the face of the earth . . . people would have thought you were crazy, right? The people of Afghanistan didn’t have the intellect or historical knowledge to know that they wasn’t supposed to wipe out the Soviet Union, is that right? . . . We saw the fall of one so-called superpower, Old Sam (the United States) is next."[citation needed]

On October 6, 2002 he spoke on Muhammad's model of leadership and its modern applications at the ICIT Seerah Conference in Sri Lanka.[6] On July 7, 2000 Musa, while in the company of his wife and daughter, witnessed the Metropolitan Police (Washington, DC) beating a citizen. He attempted to intervene by approaching the officers and telling them to stop. They continued until Musa grabbed one of the officers and was consequently arrested for assaulting the police. He spent two nights in jail before appearing before a judge on July 10. In court, the police reduced the charge against him to a misdemeanor.[7]

Musa has made a number of controversial statements:

Zionist American agents blew up the World Trade Center; Palestinian suicide bombers are heroes; the U.S. government saturated U.S. cities with heroin in the 1960s to snuff out blacks' rebellion; that the United States should become an Islamic state[1] In a video aired by Fox News, Musa stated, from behind a podium at the University of California at Irvine on Sept. 9, 2001, that "If you don't stay out of our way and leave us alone, we're going to burn America down." Musa later stated that he was simply paraphrasing Jamil Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown, a prominent Black Panther in the 1960s. Musa never threatened to burn the United States down, according to a longer video and transcript of the speech posted on the Web site of the The Investigative Project.[8] [1]

Musa has stated that "the American ship is going down. And it's clowns like that [President George W. Bush] that's driving it down. We don't have to do nothing. Just step back, pray, fast, do good deeds, and stuff like that. And let that guy go. . . . When he finishes, nobody will love, nobody will trust, and nobody will believe anything coming from the United States of America."[1]

[edit] Banning from the UKIn April 2009 Musa's name was released to the press as one of 22 people banned from entering the United Kingdom in October 2008. The UK government said this was due to him being "Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fomenting and glorifying terrorist violence in furtherance of his particular beliefs and seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts." [9][10]

Fathima Rifqa Bary may not be a household name to most Americans, but she may soon be the international symbol of society’s willful blindness to the dangers of Islamic radicalism already present.

Bary, a seventeen year-old high school student who previously lived in the Columbus, Ohio area, is of Sri Lankan decent and was raised in a Muslim home with her family in Ohio. Over the last few years, Rifqa, as she is known among friends, was introduced to and chose to secretly convert to Christianity.

During this summer, she saw growing threats to her safety developing within her family and within the local Muslim community of Columbus, and she fled Ohio to Florida, taking refuge with a pastor and his wife. Rifqa Bary is a minor who continues to reside in Florida following the ruling of a Florida judge until further investigations can be conducted.

This case has become a significant matter for both Ohio and Florida officials who are required to uphold the law and promote justice within the legal systems of the respective states. In doing so, all parties involved are required to take an unconstrained look at the facts of the matter in order to make objective and lawful decisions about the fate of this young American girl.

The facts are these: (1) Rifqa Bary left Islam and converted to Christianity; (2) Ms. Bary has provided statements to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) that her parents and others have threatened her life because she left Islam; (3) Ms. Bary claims there are requirements in Islamic Law calling for her killing as an apostate; (4) a due diligence search reveals authoritative English translations of Islamic Law are available to investigators seeking to review it; (5) a review of Islamic Law reveals there are requirements and rules as to how apostates from Islam are to be dealt with (for instance, see The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, "Umdat al-Salik" also known as "Reliance of the Traveller" -- publicly available in English); and (6) Rifqa Bary’s parents appear to adhere to Islamic Law -- which is considered the “law of the land” in Islamic communities.

An objective and fact-based analysis of this information logically and necessarily will lead to the conclusion that further investigation into this matter is required. However, no such reviews or investigations have been conducted to date into the facts of the matter as described above. Since these facts are ascertainable and knowable, the question must be asked: “Why do law enforcement entities and prosecutors in Florida not understand this?”

Have they, and we as a society, lost the ability to take an unconstrained look at objective facts and make decisions based on these facts?

Rifqa Bary’s parents directly told FDLE officials investigating the threat allegations there are no provisions in Islamic Law for “honor killings” for apostasy. This statement seems to have been taken at face value without a due diligence effort to discover the knowable facts about this matter.

The issues of “honor killings” and apostates -- those who leave Islam -- are discussed in detail within Islamic Law, and are two different subjects that should not be confused. While it appears the phrase “honor killing” has been most prevalent in media and web reports on this matter, Rifqa Bary’s issue revolves around her decision to leave Islam, which has now been publicly declared -- making her an apostate under Islamic Law, which prescribes the penalty of death. “Honor killings” -- a different Islamic concept -- applies to the public misbehavior of women. So Bary’s family is correct: there are no “honor killings” of apostates: their death penalty is separately imposed and automatically so.

Further complicating this matter is the fact that the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)-Columbus (Ohio) and the Staff Attorney for CAIR were present during the interview of Mr. Bary by FDLE Investigators. This raises serious questions since the FDLE report was silent on the fact that CAIR is a known Muslim Brotherhood entity and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history - the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, which proved HLF is a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) creed is "Allah is our goal; the Messenger is our guide: the Koran is our constitution; Jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our highest inspiration," and their stated objective in America is a "Civilization-Jihad" to destroy the United States from within in order to implement Islamic Law here.

All of these material facts are relevant for two critical reasons. First, they should be made known to all officials involved in this case as a matter of course. Secondly, it raises the question as to why law enforcement officials would allow the CAIR officials into the interview at all, in light of the fact they represent an organization objectively known to be hostile towards to the United States and unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. A review of the Muslim Brotherhood writings and approved Islamic legal texts also reveals the MB has strong positions on how apostates from Islam should be dealt with, and the requirements of Islam in these matters.

Apostasy is specifically addressed in Peace and the Limits of War, written by Louay Safi, the Executive Director of the Islamic Society of North America's (ISNA) Leadership Development Council. ISNA is a known Muslim Brotherhood entity and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history - HLF. Safi is also the former Executive Director of IIIT (Malaysia) and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists -- both known Muslim Brotherhood entities. The book was published by IIIT and was approved by the Secretary General of ISNA. In it, Mr. Safi notes that individual apostates cannot be killed for a "quiet desertion of personal Islamic duties," but can be put to death as "just punishment" when the apostate deserts Islam publicly (p. 31).

As a matter of professional responsibility, anyone investigating this matter must seek out and understand these facts, and must remain open-minded in conducting an unconstrained analysis of these facts. That is the professional responsibility of all men and women who are charged with the duties within the ranks of law enforcement, as well as those charged with prosecuting violations of U.S. and state law. We take an oath to the Constitution which binds us to these duties, and we must be faithful to this oath. Truth must prevail.

Mr. Guandolo is a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a former active duty Infantry/Reconnaissance Officer in the United States Marine Corps, and a former Special Agent of the FBI in Washington, D.C. for over 12 years. He currently advises the government on a variety of issues.

Six months into his stint as a guard at Guantánamo, Terry Holdbrooks converted to Islam. What made him do it, asks Sarfraz Manzoor

Sarfraz ManzoorThe GuardianWednesday 7 October 2009

Terry Holdbrooks arrived at Guantánamo detention camp in the summer of 2003 as a godless 19-year-old with a love of drinking, hard rock music and tattoos. By the time he left Cuba the following year, he had alienated his army colleagues, won the respect of the detainees and, most astonishingly, converted to Islam in a midnight ceremony in the presence of one of the detainees, who had become his mentor.

When I meet Holdbrooks, now 26 and named Mustafa Abdullah, he is wearing a black Muslim cap, a thick beard and long-sleeved traditional robes that almost obscure the tattoo on his right arm that reads "by demons be driven".

Holdbrooks grew up in Arizona, the only son of junkie parents who split up when he was seven years old. He was raised by his ex-hippie grandparents. Tired of being poor, determined not to follow in his parents' footsteps and keen to see the world, Holdbrooks signed up for the military. He was stationed with the 253rd Military Police Company, mostly doing administrative support work, when he was told he was to be deployed to Guantánamo.

During a two-week training course, the new guards took it in turns to act as detainees, and were also taken to Ground Zero. "We were not taught anything about Islam," he says. "We were shown videos of 11 September and all we kept being told was that the detainees were the worst of the worst – they were Bin Laden's drivers, Bin Laden's cooks, and these people will kill you the first chance they get."

Holdbrooks skims over the words, as if he is quoting from his forthcoming memoir, Traitor? "I was questioning things from day one," he says. "The first thing I saw was a kid who is all of 16 who had never seen the ocean, didn't know the world was round. I am sitting there thinking, what can he possibly know about the war on terror, what could he possibly know?"

Holdbrooks' duties at Guantánamo including cleaning, collecting rubbish, walking up and down the block to ensure detainees weren't passing anything between cells and ferrying them to and from interrogations. There were plenty of opportunities for communication. Holdbrooks's friendliness towards the detainees – they called him "the nice guard" – earned him unwelcome attention from his fellow guards.

"I didn't have a very high impression of my colleagues," he says. Many of them were "ridiculous Budweiser-drinking, cornbread-fed, tobacco-chewing drunks, racists and bigots" who blindly followed orders, and within months he had stopped talking to them altogether. There were frequent physical altercations: "One time one of them said to me, 'Hey, Holdbrooks, you know what we are going to do today? We are going to skull-fuck the Taliban out of you – you're a sympathiser and we don't like that." That led to another fist fight."

While the guards indulged in alcohol, porn and sports, Holdbrooks says he needed to learn how the detainees could endure abuse and still smile, while he was utterly miserable.

"I knew nothing about Islam prior to Guantánamo," he says, "so this was a complete culture shock to me. I wanted to learn as much I could, so I started talking to the detainees about politics, ethics and morals, and about their lives and cultural differences – we would talk all the time." What began as curiosity turned to disciplined study, with Holdbrooks spending at least an hour a day learning about Islam and talking in chatrooms online. Among those he talked to were the Tipton trio of British Muslims who featured in Michael Winterbottom's docudrama, The Road to Guantánamo; another was a man the other detainees referred to as the General – Moroccan-born Ahmed Errachidi, who had lived in Britain for 18 years, working as a chef, and spent five and a half years in Guantánamo accused of attending al-Qaida training camps. (He was later released and cleared of any wrongdoing.)

"We'd talk for hours and hours," Holdbrooks says. "We'd talk about books, about music, about philosophy: we would stay up all night and talk about religion."

Finally, six months into his time at Guantánamo, Holdbrooks was ready. On 29 December 2003, in the presence of Errachidi, he repeated the shahada, the statement of faith that is the sole requirement for converting to Islam: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet". The Guantánamo guard was now a Muslim.

He stopped drinking and even gave up music, because his interpretation of Islam suggested that this, too, was unacceptable. "It was not easy praying five times a day without my colleagues finding out," he says. "I told them I had to go the bathroom a lot."

Converting to Islam made Holdbrooks even more unhappy about his work – he felt he was worse off than the detainees. "They were having a lot more fun than I was. The Tipton trio were always playing tricks on the guards and the interrogators. The detainees had a lot of freedom in their confinement: I had all the freedoms they didn't have, but I was a slave to what the army wanted me to do."

This claim sounds implausible, but Holdbrooks says he is referring to their freedom of thought: he was impressed by the independence he saw in the detainees, compared to his fellow guards. This still seems a rather self-pitying analysis, particularly when he goes on to describe how he had seen detainees being tortured. "It was my job to take prisoners to interrogations, so sometimes I would sit and watch," he says. "I would see detainees who would be locked up for hours in horrible positions – for hours upon hours upon hours, in a room that might be 50 degrees or 60 degrees.

"There was one man who had defecated on himself and this ogre of an interrogator would douse water on him and then ask him if he was going to talk, and he would say he had nothing to talk about, and I remember thinking, what good is this going to accomplish? You cannot abuse and torture people and expect to get results that are accurate and credible."

In the summer of 2004, Holdbrooks left Guantánamo and was later discharged from the army on the grounds of a "general personality disorder". The alcohol problem that had plagued him before enlisting returned, and when his marriage dissolved, he sought solace in the old comforts of drinking, casual sex and music. "I was having nightmares about my time in Guantánamo," he says, "and I spent the best part of three years just trying to drink Guantánamo out of my mind."

Today, Holdbrooks is a practising Muslim again, but he does not seem to be at peace. There is a blankness in his gaze that hints at the scars his childhood and Guantánamo have left on him.

Why had this hard-living Arizona boy embraced Islam? The question needles me throughout our conversation. It is only when, towards the end, Holdbrooks reveals that his favourite words are "structure", "order" and "discipline" that the pieces fall into place. Holdbrooks's life had been a search for order: the regimentation of army life had appeared to offer structure, and when it let him down, he turned to religion.

Holdbrooks has more in common with his former colleagues than he realises: their allegiance to the army is matched by his adherence to faith. "Islam is a very disciplined, regimented faith and it requires a great deal of effort and conviction," he says. "I've had an unbelievable fascination with structure and order for as long as I can remember: structure, order and discipline – I just love them."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Feds: Imam Who Led Radical Islam Group Killed in FBI Raid

DETROIT — A man described as a leader of a radical Sunni Islam group in the U.S. was fatally shot Wednesday afternoon while resisting arrest and exchanging gunfire with federal agents, authorities said.

Agents at a warehouse in Dearborn were trying to arrest Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. Ten followers listed in a criminal complaint were also being rounded up in the area.

Abdullah refused to surrender, fired a weapon and was killed by gunfire from agents, FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said.

In a court filing, the FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam of a Black Muslim radical group named Ummah whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States.No one was charged with terrorism. But Abdullah was "advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States," FBI agent Gary Leone said in an affidavit.

"He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric," Leone said. "Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting."

Leone said members of the national group mostly are black and some converted to Islam while in prisons across the United States."Abdullah preaches that every Muslim should have a weapon, and should not be scared to use their weapon when needed," Leone wrote.It was not immediately clear how many of the other 10 suspects were in custody.

The group believes that a separate Islamic state in the U.S. would be controlled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado for shooting two police officers in Georgia in 2000, Leone said. Al-Amin, a veteran of the black power movement, started the group after he converted to Islam in prison.

"They're not taking their cues from overseas," said Jimmy Jones, a professor of world religions at Manhattanville College and a longtime Muslim prison chaplain. "This group is very much American born and bred."The movement at one time was believed to include a couple of dozen mosques around the country. Ummah is now dwarfed in numbers and influence by other African-American Muslim groups, particularly the mainstream Sunnis who were led by Imam W.D. Mohammed, who recently died.

By evening, authorities still were working the scene near the Detroit-Dearborn border and the warehouse was surrounded by police tape.The U.S. attorney's office said an FBI dog was also killed during the shootout.

Abdullah's mosque is in a brick duplex on a quiet, residential street in Detroit. A sign on the door in English and Arabic reads, in part, "There is no God but Allah."

Several men congregated on the porch Wednesday night and subsequently attacked a photographer from The Detroit News who was taking pictures from across the street. Ricardo Thomas had his camera equipment smashed and had a bloody lip from the attack.

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, said the FBI had briefed him about Wednesday's raids and told him they were the result of a two-year investigation."We know that this is not something to be projected as something against Muslims," Hamad said.

Detroit -- The leader of a Detroit mosque who allegedly espoused violence and separatism was shot and killed Wednesday in an FBI gun battle at a Dearborn warehouse.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was being arrested on a raft of federal charges including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, and firearms offenses.

Charges were also filed against 11 of Abdullah's followers. Eight were in custody Wednesday night awaiting detention hearings today; three remained at large.

A federal complaint filed Wednesday identified Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, as "a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group." His black Muslim group calls itself "Ummah," or the brotherhood, and wants to establish a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law, Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a joint statement.

"He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric," an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. "Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting."

The Ummah is headed nationally by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a state sentence for the murder of two police officers in Georgia.

Early Wednesday afternoon, FBI agents and local police from the Joint Terrorism Task Force surrounded a warehouse and trucking firm on Miller Road near Michigan Avenue where Abdullah and four of his followers were hiding, said Special Agent Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit.

When agents entered the warehouse, four of the men obeyed orders to surrender but Abdullah opened fire and was shot to death, Berchtold said. An FBI dog was also shot and killed, she said.

Through a 45-page complaint filed in the case alleges Abdullah "calls his followers to an offensive jihad" and preaches that every Muslim should "have a weapon and should not be scared to use their weapon when needed," charges in the case to not include terrorism or national security crimes.

The complaint further alleged that an armed group known as the "Sutra team" protected the mosque.

In January, when members were evicted from a building on Joy Road for non-payment of property taxes, Detroit police confiscated two firearms, about 40 knives and martial arts weapons from Abdullah's apartment, the complaint alleged.

The mosque then relocated to Clairmount in Detroit, the complaint says.

According to the complaint, Abdullah told an informant that if the FBI came to get him: "I'll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody." On another occasion, he said: "We've got to take out the U.S. government," the complaint alleges.

David Nu'man of Detroit, who considered himself a friend of Abdullah, said he is skeptical about the allegations.

"It doesn't seem to be of his character," said Nu'man, who had attended the mosque on Joy Road but was not a member.

Ihsan Bagby, the general secretary of the Muslim Alliance of North America, said Abdullah was a member of the Lexington, K.Y. based group, and his shooting shocked the African American Muslim community nationwide.

"We want to know what happened," said Bagby. "We had no inkling of any kind of criminal activity. This is a complete shock to all of us."

The others charged are:

Mohammad Abdul Salaam, also known as Gregory Stone, 45, of Detroit with conspiracy to commit federal crimes and sale or receipt of stolen goods.

Abdullah Beard, also known as Detric Lamont Driver, 37, of Detroit with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

Abdul Saboor, also known as Dwayne Edward Davis, 37, of Detroit with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

Mujahid Carswell, also known as Mujahid Abdullah, 30, of Detroit and Ontario, Canada, with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.

Denial and deception instead of any honest effort to come to grips with the root causes of honor killing. "Arizona Police Hunt for Dad Accused of Running Over Daughter: Police Say Faleh Hassan Almaleki Believed His Daughter Was 'Too Westernized,'" by Sarah Netter for ABC News, October 22 (thanks to James):

Police in Arizona are hunting for an Iraqi-American father who they say ran over his daughter with his car to punish her for becoming "too Westernized" and rebuffing the conservative ways he valued.Memo to ABC News: "conservatives" don't generally run over their daughters with their cars for any reason at all.

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, was last seen fleeing the parking lot of the Department of Economic Development in Peoria, Ariz., Tuesday after hitting his 20-year-old daughter and her boyfriend's mother with his Jeep Grand Cherokee. Noor Faleh Almaleki is in "life-threatening condition," Peoria Police spokesman Mike Tellef told ABCNews.com today. Her boyfriend's mother, 43-year-old Amal Edan Khalaf, is also still hospitalized, but with non-life threatening injuries. "It occured because her not following traditional family values. We've been told that by everybody," Tellef said. "He felt she was becoming too westernized and he didn't like that." [...]

Not "traditional family values." Western non-Muslims who adhere to "traditional family values" do not generally run down their wayward daughters with their cars.

Noor Almaleki had backed out of an arranged marriage about a year ago, police learned, and had been living with Khalaf and her son in a nearby town. Tellef said the young woman dressed in American clothing and was wearing typical Western attire when she was struck.

The family were all American citizens, though Tallef believes the parents were born in Iraq.

He said it was unclear if Faleh Almaleki intended to kill his daughter, but "it was definitely intentional that he ran them down." [...]

While Tellef had heard of so-called "honor killings" in other parts of the United States, this was the first such crime in Peoria.

Ibrahim Ramey, human and civil rights director for the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, told ABCNews.com that whenever this type of crime involves a Muslim it can serve to elevate the fears of people who may already harbor misconceptions about Islam.

Typical denial and deception.

In the first place, what is the Muslim American Society?

"In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation's major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members." -- Chicago Tribune, 2004.

And what is the Muslim Brotherhood?

The Muslim Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." -- "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.

And secondly, instead of worrying about people getting "misconceptions of Islam," he should be working in the Islamic community to root out the assumptions that lead to honor killing. But you'll notice that he says nothing about that.

"It's reprehensible," he said of honor killings. "It's wrong." Ramey pointed out that a verse in the Koran specifically states that there is no compulsion in religion, meaning that people can not be compelled or coerced into being Muslim or adhering to a certain set of rules.

"People have to obey or adhere to Islam ... according to the dictates of their own conscience," he said.

Yet despite the fact that Koran 2:256 -- "There is no compulsion in religion" -- is in the Koran, honor killing is broadly tolerated in the Islamic world. No one, of course, dares to confront the root of the problem by pointing out such inconvenient truths as the fact that a manual of Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. In accord with this, in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Then this ABC story drags in Rifqa Bary:

Honor Killings Unfairly Cast Negative Light on Islam The notion of an honor killing -- Muslim men murdering female relatives for dishonoring the family by violating Islamic tenets -- made the news over the summer when 17-year-old Rifqa Bary ran away from her parents in Ohio and turned up in the Florida home of Christian pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz. Rafqa Barry [sic] claimed that her Muslim father had threatened to kill her for converting to Christianity.

Rifqa made tearful television appearance, crying on the Lorenzes shoulders, describing how she had to sneak around to attend church.

"They have to kill me because I'm a Christian. It's an honor [killing]. If they love me more than God, then they have to kill me," she told ABC's Orlando affiliate WFTV last month.

Blake Lorenz pointed to other honor killings, including the January 2008 murders of two Texas sisters who were believed to have been murdered by their Muslim father in a religion-fueld [sic] rage.

But Rifqa's father, Mohamed Bary, denied the accusation and said that while he preferred his daughter be a Muslim, she was free to practice whatever religion she chose.

An assertion without evidence, contradicted by the fact that she was a Christian for several years before she met those who allegedly coached her.

A Florida judge this month said he planned to send Rifqa back to Ohio after determining there was no evidence that her life was in danger.See here for the facts.

Ramey said it's expected that incidents such as these will cause some backlash against the Muslim community, especially among Americans who have become fearful of Islam in the years since the war on terror and conflicts in places like Somalia. But they can also open a door for discussion and questions so the community can understand that Islam is not a violent religion.

"It's certainly not part of the religion," he said," to run people down with vehicles."

That is merely a statement about the manner of killing, not about the killing itself.

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Monday, Nov. 09, 2009 5:35PM EST

Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 4:09AM EST

.Only hours after news broke of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, the largest military base in the United States, I began receiving e-mails from agonized Americans. “What does it mean that the suspect has a Muslim name?” asked one.

“Does it matter that he seems to be a Muslim?” asked another. Overnight, more such messages poured in, their tone being confused instead of confrontational.

The fact that these Americans are posing questions rather than rushing to judgment is a sign they're not all bigots. They're genuinely wrestling with how to react beyond immediate shock and grief.

The grappling surely intensified after reports that Major Nidal Malik Hasan visited radical Islamist websites, chatted approvingly of suicide bombers and shouted “Allahu akbar” as he let loose on comrades. Video of him roaming a convenience store in traditional Arab garb, days after having told the store clerk he didn't want to fight fellow Muslims, offers another reason to reflect on the role of religious affinity.

Let's be clear: If an alleged criminal merely happens to be a Muslim, then religion may well be immaterial. But if his crime is committed in the name of Islam, then religion serves to motivate. In that case, the suspect's Muslim identity absolutely matters. Words, gestures and images should be analyzed – fully, openly and honestly.

Not just in America. Three years ago, police arrested young Muslim Canadians for reportedly plotting to blow up Parliament and behead the PM. The Toronto 17, soon to number 18, dubbed their campaign Operation Badr. This refers to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military victory achieved by the Prophet Mohammed and his ragtag followers, who were outmanned and outarmed by the other side.

The seventh-century story of triumph against all odds is the stuff of legend in Islam – proof, we Muslims are often reminded, that God intended the Prophet to be a warrior and not merely a statesman. As Iranians could attest during their war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Badr provides potent religious inspiration to generations of Muslim soldiers the world over.

Admittedly, this is uncomfortable for millions of Canadians to hear. So uncomfortable that, on arresting the Toronto 17, police didn't once refer to “Islam” or “Muslims” during a press briefing. At a second presser, police boasted about avoiding the words “Islam” and “Muslims.” They characterized their omission as an exercise in sensitivity. I considered it an exercise in denial about the role of religion in the alleged plot.

Later, when I raised my concern at an RCMP conference on communication, assorted staff and members of the force confided that their lawyers prevented them from mentioning the offending words.

Of course, Canada is hardly alone in avoiding this most public of questions. Some European countries are electing ultra-right politicians precisely because mainstream elites fear touching the “Muslim problem,” thereby creating a vacuum for vulgar populists to fill.

Media are among the worst culprits. In the wake of the 2005 London transit bombings, respectable journalists repeatedly quoted ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan railing against British foreign policy. But, in the same video, he emphasized that “Islam is our religion” and “the Prophet is our role model.” Tellingly, he made these statements before bringing up the invasion of Iraq.

Religious mythology also manifests in unexpected ways. Consider Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered artist-turned-satirist Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004. Mr. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into Mr. van Gogh's body. Knowing this would be enough to finish him off, why didn't he stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate Mr. van Gogh?

Yet again, we must face the religious dimension. The blade – or sword – is an implement associated with seventh-century tribal warfare. Using it thus becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into Mr. van Gogh's body, though scrawled in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry. Small wonder that, at his trial, Mr. Bouyeri proudly confessed to being animated by “religious conviction.”

The past few days have revealed much about the complex Major Hasan: a patriotic American dissenter, a brooding recluse, yet a kind neighbour, occasionally taunted by fellow soldiers but more frequently haunted by his conscience and the religious direction in which it turned. While we should be careful not to reduce the story to Islam, let us be equally alert not to erase Islam altogether. Understanding is served by analyzing, not sanitizing.

Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, is a scholar with New York University and the European Foundation for Democracy.

Irshad Manji is a lesbian Muslim who says her religion is stuck in the Middle Ages. The outspoken author tells Johann Hari how she became a target for assassination

Wednesday, 5 May 2004

The death threats began six months ago. One morning,Irshad Manji opened her e-mail and read the first ofmany pledges to kill her. "It contained some prettyconcrete details that showed a lot of thought had beenput into the death-threat," she explains now,unblinking. She can't say how many she's received -"The police tell me not to talk about this stuff" -but she admits that "they are becoming pretty up-closeand personal."

"One story that I can tell you," she says, "a storythat I have the permission from the police to tellyou, is that I was in an airport in North Americarecently and somebody at the airport recognised me. Ihad a conversation with them. While I was engaged inconversation with a very portly, very sweetfifty-something man and his wife, an Arab guy came upto my travel companion and said, 'You are luckier thanyour friend.' As a nice polite Canadian she asked,'What do you mean?' and he didn't say anything. Heturned his hand in to the shape of a gun and he pulledthe make-believe trigger towards my head. She didn'tknow what to make of this, so she asked him to clarifyhis intentions. He said 'Not now, you will find outlater,' and then he was gone."

**Gee, I wonder if the "I" word has anything to do with the motivations of those that threaten Ms. Manji. Let's not rush to judgement.**

Some keep telling us that Nidal Malik Hasan's act "had nothing to do with being a Muslim." And there is a variant on this, used by those who, though they may have reservations about Islam, offer us a false alternative. One such Offeror of False Alternatives is that publicity-hound the henna-haired Irshad Manji, Brave Young Reformer Of Islam, who "speaks truth to (Muslim) power etc. etc." and who should never be confused with the real, full-fledged, non-apologist apostates, though she keeps being confused with them, a confusion she encourages.

This is what Irshad Manji has posted at her blog:

You've probably heard about the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas - America's biggest military base. The main suspect has a Muslim name. Does this matter? If he did it in the name of Islam, then religion is a motivation. In that case, his Muslim identity is relevant. But if he did it out of other motives - say, mental illness - then his Muslim ID means nothing. That's my take. Yours?Notice how she has set this up.This man, this "main suspect," "has a Muslim name." Is that really the only thing that with such studied casualness connects this man to Islam, and not his ever-present Qur'an, not his history, over several years, of publicly denouncing Infidels and otherwise showing his deep devotion to the most bloodcurdling parts - see Sura 9 - of the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira, not his postings on the Internet about killing 100 Infidel soldiers, not anything at all except that "Muslim name"?

Did he do it out of some quite unspecified Muslim motive? Or was his "motive"--not exactly a correct use of English, but perhaps we are expecting too much from the excitable likes of Irshad Manji - "mental illness"?

But isn't there a third possibility? Even if you do not accept what I insist makes the most sense - to see this killer as a Muslim intent on Jihad - there is another way to look at this. Nidal Hasan was unwilling to use other, less violent means to conduct Jihad in this country, for now, given the balance of forces and the far greater apprehension, by Muslims, that the Infidels in this country are not quite as yielding as those in the countries of Western Europe have proved so far (but for how long?) to be. But if you wish, for the sake of argument or out of belief, to think that Nidal Hasan was unusually ferocious in his fervor, more than many Muslims, so that you might wish to console yourself with at least a nod to "depression" or "mental illness" or some such, that is really no consolation at all. In fact, given that in modern industrial societies a great many people suffer from Durkheimian anomie and economic insecurity and loneliness, and so on, given that a great many people at any one time suffer from depression, should we not ask ourselves instead a different question? And that question is: what happens when a non-Muslim becomes depressed, and what happens when a Muslim, living within a society of non-Muslims, becomes depressed?

I have written about this before many times, and choose here simply to repost a piece - "Fitzgerald: Anything To Do With Terrorism?" that appeared here two years ago:

There has been much discussion lately of whether or not this or that case has anything to do with "terrorism." The Salt Lake mall shooter and the Nashville would-be murderer by taxicab spring immediately to mind. The word "terrorism" may not quite fit if the FBI takes it to mean some kind of organized conspiracy, something done by a group. What should be made clear is that Islam supplies a pre-fabricated mental grid or, to vary the metaphor, a prism through which to view the universe. And on that grid, or through that prism, there is always an Identifiable Enemy, and that Enemy is Always the Infidel. Feeling bad? Feeling blue? Feeling things aren't going right for you? It happens to all of us. We blame our parents, our siblings, our children, The System, Amerika with a "k," Capitalism, fate, the stars, our serotonin level, our cholesterol level. Even, at times, we may blame ourselves. That's if you are an ordinary Infidel.

What if you are a Muslim? You don't have to blame your parents, your siblings, or anyone or anything else except: the Infidel. And you don't need to be part of Al-Qaeda, or Islamic Jihad, or Jaish-e-Muhammad. You don't even have to have been a faithful attender of a mosque. You can be Intel engineer "Mike" (Muhammad) Hawash, married to an American, with Little-League-attending children, earning $360,000 a year. And when the banality and boredom of life assails you, you can return to that Old-Time Religion, that is to Islam, and start reading, and re-reading, with the effects we all know, the Qur'an. Then you can light out for the territories, in this case those territories being Western China, and thence, you hope, to Afghanistan, in order to kill Americans. Yes, you are technically an "American" yourself, but the categories and the loyalties of the Infidel nation-state mean nothing to you: you are a Muslim, and that is the only Category that counts, Muslim as opposed to Infidel.

All that one need have asked in the case of Sulejman Talovic was why he went out to a mall, and not in a sudden mental raptus, and quietly and calmly proceeded to kill as many people as he could. Did he see it as killing Infidel after Infidel after Infidel? No one need have asked if he had a collaborator, to be guilty of violent Jihad. No one need have asked if he wrote it out. All one needed to do was find out what his worldview was: did he, or did he not, see the world as divided, as so many Muslims are taught to see it, between Believer and Infidel? Did FBI agents determine this before they dismissed "terrorism" in this case? The answer to that question is not known.

If FBI agents are still ignorant of Islam, then the country is endangered. Anyone running for President should assure us that he, or she, will make sure that "all of our security services, all of those who are in the army and the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and the local police, will be fully informed of the nature of the ideology that menaces us, and does more than menace us." If you wish, if you don't dare utter the word "Islam," then call it "Islamism" or "fanatical Islam" or some other such term.

But more and more, those even in government have a duty to approach the truth asymptotically, so that the uninformed or insufficiently informed will come to locate, accurately, the menace for all Infidels in the immutable texts of Islam, not in the teachings supposed invented by the proponents of "Wahhabi" Islam, or of "Islamism," or of "extremist" Islam, but mainstream Islam.

And those who are not in government have no excuse for using terms such as "Islamism." No, those without official positions have a stark and unwavering duty not to add to the confusion that currently prevails among Americans and Westerners in general, but instead to constantly clarify whatever others at the moment may now deem necessary to obscure.

One may hope, of course, that they may deem this obscuring action to be necessary only on a temporary basis, if they are fully aware of the real, disturbing, frightening truth.

To Irshad Manji's false dichotomy - was it because he was mentally ill (was mental illness, in her comical solecism, the "motive"?), or because he was a Muslim? I think he met the definition of a fervent Muslim, convinced of the rightness of his beliefs and willing, as so many Muslims in other countries over many years have shown themselves willing, to act on them. They act upon them without delay and without calculating the possible consequences to the long-term interests of Islam, as its adherents are still in the process of establishing themselves in the Western world, and are hoping to continue to do so with no disruptions from Infidels waking from a deep dream of interfaith peace. But even if we were to grant - I don't - that he met the definition of "mentally ill," we must also look, as my 2007 article says, at the pre-fabricated mental grid, or rather the ideological prism through which the world is apprehended by Muslims, and in which world, the blameworthy are always the Infidels. You don't blame your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children, fate, Amerikkka, The System, the stars, your serotonin level, your cholesterol level, the malfunctioning of your dopamine receptors. No, those possibilities are open to Infidels. But for you, the Muslim suffering mental disarray (that kind which does not come from being a Muslim, living in a non-Muslim society and furious that Muslims do not yet rule, and must smile, and be outwardly nice to Infidels, and appear to accept things that are contra naturam in your view, where Infidels still appear unafraid and even call most of the shots), your enemy is always and everywhere the Infidel.

And that is what Irshad Manji ignores. So do others who are trying to deflect attention from the perfectly explicable behavior of a deep Believer, not a "moderate" who has managed to ignore or pretend to ignore some or much of what Islam inculcates. Manji, by focusing on "mental illness," ignores the fact that such an explanation, for us, the potential victims of those Muslims who suffer depression or other forms of such mental illness, misses the point -- that such Muslims turn their fury, almost inevitably, on us, the undifferentiated enemy Infidels.

Given the high rates of mental illness in the modern industrialized world, that is no consolation at all.

Richard T. Antoun, a respected Binghamton University anthropology professor who grew up in Shrewsbury, spent his entire career seeking peace. His work focused on bridging the divide between religions and cultures, particularly in the Middle East.

But the 77-year-old professor's life ended violently Friday when he was stabbed multiple times in his campus office, allegedly by a graduate student whom he was advising on his doctoral thesis.

The student, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, 46, was from Saudi Arabia. Mr. Antoun was serving on the dissertation committee for Mr. Zahrani's graduate thesis and apparently had known him for quite some time, according to news reports. The university's Web site says Mr. Zahrani's doctoral thesis is called "Sacred Voice, Profane Sight: The Senses, Cosmology, and Epistemology in Early Arabic Culture."

Mr. Zahrani was immediately arrested and charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bail. The motive for the attack is unclear.

Linda Miller of Holden, Mr. Antoun's youngest sister, said she has many positive memories of her brother, a man who strove for peace in all things.

"He was interested in bringing forth understanding between different cultures and religions," she said. "He tried to explain and help people understand current events, particularly in the Middle East."

Mr. Antoun was "a sociocultural anthropologist who has conducted research among peasants in Jordan, urbanites in Lebanon, peasant-farmers in Iran, and migrants in Texas and Greece," according to the Web site for Binghamton University, which is part of the State University of New York system. He taught at the University of Chicago, Manchester University in England and Cairo University, according to his résumé, which is also posted on the site.

Mr. Antoun had written six books focusing on the Middle East, and spent much of his long career educating people about the region and its people. His 2001 book, "Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Muslim and Jewish Movements," was particularly timely, coming out just before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He retired from teaching at Binghamton University in 1999, but remained active on campus and within the anthropology department.

Mrs. Miller said she last saw her brother in November, when he and his son Nicholas stayed at the Holden home she shares with her husband, David. Mr. Antoun and his son had dinner, and the next day attended a New England Patriots game. It was a ritual they performed every year.

She last spoke to her brother on Thanksgiving.

"There is going to be a big hole," she said of his death. "I am bent on keeping his memory alive."

Mr. Antoun returned to his hometown regularly to visit family and speak about events in the Middle East.

Speaking in 2001 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester, where David Miller is minister emeritus, Mr. Antoun said that religious fundamentalism thrives when a government fails to provide for its people.

"One reason fundamentalists are winning out is they are providing services the government is not," he said. The only way Afghans obtained an education, he said, was to go to a Taliban school, where they would not only receive an Islamic education but were fed as well.

Mrs. Miller said her brother was scheduled to give a lecture at Assumption College in the spring, part of a course being offered by Worcester Institute for Senior Education. The course is called "Islam: Religion, History and Culture, an Overview." Mr. Antoun was scheduled to speak about the role of women in Islam, and then would be chairman of a panel discussion following the course.

Born in Worcester, Mr. Antoun grew up in Shrewsbury, graduating from Shrewsbury High School in 1949. He attended Williams College, and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1963.

Mrs. Miller said her older brother had an unquenchable passion for baseball, following the Boston Braves until they left for Milwaukee, and then the Boston Red Sox. She remembers quizzing him for hours on the statistics printed on the backs of his numerous baseball cards - information that never left her and has helped her to solve countless crossword puzzles.

"He was an incredibly loving older brother, he nurtured me in that sense," she said. When she was in high school, he would pull her essays apart to improve them. When she spent a semester abroad at 19, she went to Manchester University in England in part because her older brother was teaching there.

"It's been a lifelong, supportive, happy relationship," she said.

He leaves behind his wife of 17 years, Rosalyn, as well as two of her sons, his 40-year-old son, Nicholas, and their shared grandchildren.

A memorial service for Mr. Antoun will be held on Friday at the Unitarian Universalist Church sanctuary in Binghamton, N.Y.-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just google "Zahrani Emails" to get a picture of the motive. Another sudden jihadi.

WASHINGTON — As the years passed after Sept. 11, 2001, without another major attack on American soil and with no sign of hidden terrorist cells, many counterterrorism specialists reached a comforting conclusion: Muslims in the United States were not very vulnerable to radicalization.

American Muslims, the reasoning went, were well assimilated in diverse communities with room for advancement. They showed little of the alienation often on display among their European counterparts, let alone attraction to extremist violence.

But with a rash of recent cases in which Americans have been accused of being drawn into terrorist scheming, the rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., last month and now the alarming account of five young Virginia men who went to Pakistan and are suspected of seeking jihad, the notion that the United States has some immunity against homegrown terrorists is coming under new scrutiny.

It is a concern that President Obama noted in passing in his address on the decision to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, and one that has grown as the Afghan war and the hunt for Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan intensifies.

“These events certainly call the consensus into question,” said Robert S. Leiken, who studies terrorism at the Nixon Center, a Washington policy institute, and wrote the forthcoming book “Europe’s Angry Muslims.”

“The notion of a difference between Europe and United States remains relevant,” Mr. Leiken said. But the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American operations like drone strikes in Pakistan, are fueling radicalization at home, he said.

“Just the length of U.S. involvement in these countries is provoking more Muslim Americans to react,” Mr. Leiken said.

Concern over the recent cases has profoundly affected Muslim organizations in the United States, which have renewed pledges to campaign against extremist thinking.

“Among leaders, there’s a recognition that there’s a challenge within our community that needs to be addressed,” said Alejandro J. Beutel, government liaison at the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington, and main author of a report by the council on radicalization and how to combat it.

Mr. Beutel, a Muslim convert from New Jersey, said the council started a grass-roots counterradicalization effort in 2005, but acknowledged that “for a while it was on the back burner.” He said, “Now we’re going to revive it.”

F.B.I. investigators were in Pakistan on Friday questioning the five Virginia men. But it remained unclear whether the men would be deported to the United States, and whether they had broken any laws in either Pakistan or the United States.

At a news conference Friday at the small Virginia mosque where the men had been youth group regulars, mosque officials expressed bewilderment at claims that the men wanted to join the jihad against American troops in Afghanistan.

“I never observed any extreme behavior from them,” said Mustafa Maryam, who runs the youth group and said he had known the young men since 2006. “They were fun-loving, career-focused children. They had a bright future before them.”

Also at the press briefing, asked about reports that the five men had contacted a Pakistani militant via the Web, Mahdi Bray, the head of the Freedom Foundation of the Muslim American Society, told reporters that YouTube and social networking sites had become a dangerous recruiting tool for militants.

“We are determined not to let religious extremists exploit the vulnerability of our children through this slick, seductive propaganda on the Internet,” said Mr. Bray, who is organizing a youth meeting later this month in Chicago to address the issue.

“Silence in cyberspace is not an option for us,” he said.

The detention of the Virginia men — ranging in age from late teens to mid-20s — would have prompted soul-searching no matter when it occurred. But it comes after a series of disturbing cases that already had terror experts speculating about a trend.

There were the November shootings that took 13 lives at Fort Hood, with murder charges pending against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim and an Army psychiatrist.

There was the arrest of Najibullah Zazi, born in Afghanistan but the seeming model of the striving immigrant as a popular coffee vendor in Manhattan, accused of going to Pakistan for explosives training with the intention of attacking in the United States.

There was David Coleman Headley, (why does no one mention his name change from a Muslim name ?) a Pakistani-American living in Chicago, accused of helping plan the killings in Mumbai, India, last year and of plotting attacks in Denmark.

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There was Bryant Neal Vinas, a Muslim convert from Long Island who participated in a rocket attack on American troops in Afghanistan and used his knowledge of commuter trains in New York to advise Al Qaeda about potential targets.

There were the Somali-Americans from Minnesota who had traveled to Somalia to join a violent Islamist movement.

And there were cases of would-be terrorists who plotted attacks in Texas, Illinois and North Carolina with conspirators who turned out to be F.B.I. informants.

Bruce Hoffman, who studies terrorism at Georgetown University, said the recent cases only confirmed that it was “myopic” to believe “we could insulate ourselves from the currents affecting young Muslims everywhere else.”

Like many other specialists, Mr. Hoffman pointed to the United States’ combat in Muslim lands as the only obvious spur to many of the recent cases, especially those with a Pakistani connection.

“The longer we’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, “the more some susceptible young men are coming to believe that it’s their duty to take up arms to defend their fellow Muslims.”

A few analysts, in fact, argue that Mr. Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan — intended to prevent a terrorist haven there — could backfire.

Robert A. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, contends that suicide attacks are almost always prompted by resentment of foreign troops, and that escalation in Afghanistan will fuel more plots.

“This new deployment increases the risk of the next 9/11,” he said. “It will not make this country safer.”

Yet amid the concern about the five Virginia men and the impact of the wars on Muslim opinion, Audrey Kurth Cronin of the National War College in Washington said she found something to take comfort in.

“To me, the most interesting thing about the five guys is that it was their parents that went immediately to the F.B.I.,” she said. “It was members of the American Muslim community that put a stop to whatever those men may have been planning.”

A King County jury this morning found Naveed Haq guilty of aggravated murder in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

By Jennifer Sullivan and Steve MiletichSeattle Times staff reporters

A King County jury this morning found Naveed Haq guilty of eight counts, including aggravated first-degree murder, in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. The murder verdict carries an automatic life sentence for Haq.

The jury also found Haq, 34, guilty of five counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of unlawful imprisonment and one count of malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime law.

Haq showed no reaction as the verdicts were read, but several people in the courtroom tearfully hugged.

The jury had been weighing eight criminal counts against Haq since Thursday after seven weeks of testimony. This was Haq's second trial on the shootings. His first trial ended in a mistrial.

"We are grateful that justice for this heinous hate crime has finally been served," Richard Fruchter, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation, said in a statement issued after the verdicts were announced. "Our hearts go out to the survivors of this shooting and their families, who bravely endured not only the shooting but two trials."

Several of the victims were seated in the courtroom this morning as the verdicts were read. They testified during both trials, reliving what happened when Haq walked into the federation offices on July 28, 2006, and started shooting indiscriminately at employees. Killed was Pamela Waechter, 58, and wounded were Cheryl Stumbo, Carol Goldman, Dayna Klein, Christina Rexroad and Layla Bush.

Prosecutors said he was driven by a hatred for Israel.

One of the jurors, John Bennett, 60, of Carnation, said he watched the victims as the verdicts were read.

"I had to feel good there was a closing for them," he said.

During a news conference after the verdicts were announced, Goldman said Waechter "finally got the justice she deserved."

Erin Ehlert, senior deputy prosecutor, also spoke on behalf of the victims. "I feel a lot of finality for a lot of people ... a calming peace that the right thing was done."

Haq's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2008, when jurors announced after nearly two weeks of deliberations that they were deadlocked on all but one of the 15 criminal counts. Prosecutors immediately announced they would retry Haq. Prosecutors reduced the number of charges to simplify deliberations for jurors in the second trial. They eliminated seven of the charges from Haq's case, including one count of first-degree burglary, five counts of malicious harassment and one count of kidnapping.

The second jury deliberated on eight counts — one count of aggravated first-degree murder; five counts of attempted first-degree murder; one count of unlawful imprisonment; and one count of malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime law.

The focus of the second trial was Haq's mental state at the time of the attack. The defense did not dispute that Haq carried out the shootings, but argued that he was legally insane at the time.

Haq pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and the defense produced several mental-health experts who testified that he was mentally ill. Defense attorneys had asked that Haq be sent to a state mental hospital rather than prison.

Prosecutors agreed that Haq has a mental illness, but contended that he was sane when he entered the federation and opened fire.

"He wanted to kill these women," Ehlert, the prosecutor, told the jury during her closing argument on Thursday. "He knew exactly what his intent was when he walked in there. He planned this."

Bennett, the juror, said the jury approached the case with an open mind. He said jurors were "waiting for someone to tell us [Haq] was insane, and we never saw it."

Bennett said he wished that Haq had testified.

The defense declined to comment after the verdict.

Prosecutors also introduced as evidence audio recordings from 10 phone calls Haq placed to his family after his arrest. In the calls, recorded by the King County Jail, Haq told his mother he was "a soldier of Islam."

The recordings were not introduced during Haq's first trial.

The guilty verdict to aggravated murder means Haq will be imprisoned for life without parole.

Witnesses testified that Haq, who is of Pakistani heritage, railed against Jews and U.S.-Israeli policies as he opened fire in the Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization for the local Jewish community that raises money for social-welfare organizations, runs youth and adult educational programs, and engages in efforts in support of Israel.

Haq surrendered after talking with a 911 dispatcher.

On the 911 tape, which the prosecution played for jurors on Oct. 21, the opening day of the trial, Haq said he was tired of the world ignoring the Muslim point of view.

"I don't care if I die," Haq said to the dispatcher. "This is just to make a point."

DEARBORN, Mich. -- About 15 Arab-American students at Edsel Ford High School are in trouble over a class sweatshirt they had made over the holiday break.

The class of 2011 sweatshirt has the number 11 made to look like the World Trade Center Towers. The school's mascot, a Thunderbird, is seen flying toward the number.

Watch: Sweatshirts Sparks Controversy

Under the graphic, a tagline reads, "You can't bring us down."

The students wore the hooded sweatshirts to school Monday. They were immediately sent to the principal's office.

The sweatshirts were confiscated.

“What took place here today was an inappropriate, distasteful act,” said David Mustonen, a spokesman for Dearborn Schools. “(It was) totally inappropriate, totally disrespectful, and they just were not thinking.”

The students told the principal they didn’t mean any harm by having the sweatshirts made.

Other students who heard about and saw the shirts said they were disgusted.

“I found them very offensive and I didn’t think it was funny or fun at all,” said Brittany Johnson, a senior at Edsel Ford High.

The school has not said what disciplinary action will be taken against the students.

“If I was in charge, I would have them expelled,” said Lindsey Winstrand. “But I think suspension is the least they can do.”

The students told the principal they had the sweatshirts made at the Gibraltar Trade Center for about $25 each.

Possible story to watch. Minneapolis only had 19 murders last year. Last night 3 Somalis were gunned down in public at a neighborhood market. The shooters are loose, armed and dangerous. VERY unusual that police or media disclose ethnicity: "[Chief] says the killers are also believed to be Somali." Sounded like a botched robbery, but a couple of problems with that. If rank amateurs shoot 3 people, they probably wouldn't all die instantly. And if pros rob a convenience store for money, they probably don't want it to escalate to mass murder. This looks like a multiple public execution, (just speculating) something to do with war back home in the land of al Qaida, Civil War, Blackhawk Down and piracy. (Michael Yon gets detained and these thugs use the airport express lane with the revolving door!)

MINNEAPOLIS -- Police appealed to the public for tips Thursday about an attack at a corner market that left three Somali businessmen dead, and they backed away from describing it as an attempted robbery gone bad.

"The people in any part of this city should not only have great sympathy for the family of the victims but be outraged and stirred to actions that these people will be brought to justice," Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said.

Investigators were searching for two people who, police said, entered Seward Market and Halal Meats Wednesday night and killed three adult men.

Police Chief Tim Dolan is calling the shooters "cold-blooded killers" and warns they are very dangerous. At a Thursday morning news conference, Dolan urged anyone with information about Wednesday night's killings at Seward Market and Halal Meats to come forward.

Police say they don't know the motive behind the killings. The initial call came in as a robbery, but on Thursday authorities backed away from saying it was an attempted robbery. Instead, they say there are looking at several scenarios.

"We have some suspected motives but we won't get into the details on that, we are just not sure," Dolan said.

Dolan says there are a large number of security cameras in the store, and that surveillance video is excellent. He also says there were a number of witnesses to the crime, and that they are cooperating.

The three victims, all adult men, were members of the city's large community of Somali immigrants. Dolan says the killers are also believed to be Somali.

The store is in an area south of downtown with a significant population of Somali immigrants. Although police have not confirmed the identities of the victims, leaders in the local Somali community say they are all Somali men who worked in the store, including its owner. The men are described by a local Somali spokesman as decent members of the community who had nothing to do with gangs.

"We've never seen in Minneapolis that three Somali young guys were shot and killed at the same time on the same spot," Somali spokesman Omar Jamal said. "So there is an investigation going now. And we're asking the community to tell the police if they saw anything. Therefore those guys will be brought to justice."

Police Sgt. William Palmer said no suspects are in custody for the homicides.

Seward Market and Halal Meat, is in the city's Seward neighborhood, a middle-class area south of downtown with a significant population of Somali immigrants. Sgt. Palmer decribes the area as "a good neighborhood."

Rybak said Thursday, "I think it's a specific tragedy to a community that has come here to escape violence now has lost three members to violence."

Rybak and Dolan had planned to toute the decline of crime in the city at a news conference Thursday.

Minnesota has the largest population of Somali immigrants of any U.S. state.

Chaplain smuggled bo'x-cutter into jail'(sic)A MUSLIM chaplain for the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) was arrested today for allegedly trying to smuggle three box-cutters into a lower Manhattan jail. The imam, Imam Zul-Quarnain Shahid, has worked as a DOC jail chaplain for three years, according to department sources.Several sources said Shahid was caught attempting to bring three box-cutters into the jail, known as the Tombs, during a visit there. It was not known why he was visiting the jail.A DOC spokesman had no immediate comment.

By REUVEN BLAU and DAN MANGANLast Updated: 4:09 PM, February 3, 2010Posted: 2:11 PM, February 3, 2010A Muslim chaplain for the city Department of Correction was arrested this morning for allegedly trying to smuggle in three box-cutter razor blades to a lower Manhattan jail, The Post has learned.The chaplain, Zul-Qarnain Shahid, has worked as a DOC jail chaplain for the past three years, department sources said.Several sources said Shahid was caught this morning attempting to bring the three blades into the jail known as the Tombs during a visit there. It was not known why the Muslim cleric, who has the title imam, was visiting the jail.A DOC spokesman had no immediate comment.According to New York State Corrections Department records, a now-58-year-old man with the same name as Shahid was sentenced to 15-years-to-life in prison for second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in 1979. That man was paroled in 1993 after serving nearly 14 years, and remained on parole until August 2001.A DOC chaplain assigned to the Tombs – politically connected rabbi Leib Glanz – resigned last year after The Post exclusively revealed that he had organized a bar mitzvah party within the jail’s walls for the son of an inmate. The bar mitzvah featured catered food and a live band, as well as dozens of non-inmate guests.A Department of Investigation probe into that incident has dragged on for months, with no official result.

DEARBORN, Mich. -- About 15 Arab-American students at Edsel Ford High School are in trouble over a class sweatshirt they had made over the holiday break.

The class of 2011 sweatshirt has the number 11 made to look like the World Trade Center Towers. The school's mascot, a Thunderbird, is seen flying toward the number.

Watch: Sweatshirts Sparks Controversy

Under the graphic, a tagline reads, "You can't bring us down."

The students wore the hooded sweatshirts to school Monday. They were immediately sent to the principal's office.

The sweatshirts were confiscated.

“What took place here today was an inappropriate, distasteful act,” said David Mustonen, a spokesman for Dearborn Schools. “(It was) totally inappropriate, totally disrespectful, and they just were not thinking.”

The students told the principal they didn’t mean any harm by having the sweatshirts made.

Other students who heard about and saw the shirts said they were disgusted.

“I found them very offensive and I didn’t think it was funny or fun at all,” said Brittany Johnson, a senior at Edsel Ford High.

The school has not said what disciplinary action will be taken against the students.

“If I was in charge, I would have them expelled,” said Lindsey Winstrand. “But I think suspension is the least they can do.”

The students told the principal they had the sweatshirts made at the Gibraltar Trade Center for about $25 each.

Freedom of Speech. Everyone has overreacted, the kids were just using Icons they are familiar with. "they can't bring us down" looks like a positive message. What other info changes it into a "bad" requiring a suspension or even confiscation of their shirts?

CAIR: Defending Kifah Mustapha, The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Holy Land Foundation

On Wednesday, March 3, Chicago's WLS-TV I-Team reported that the Illinois State Police have reconsidered the appointment of Kifah Mustapha as a Muslim Chaplain. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is identified as the leading cause of Mustapha's reconsideration.

Apparently, Kifah Mustapha was slated to become the State Police’s first Muslim Chaplain after completing a course he paid for himself. Completing the course, he was issued a state police ID card and bulletproof vest as part of his uniform package for use in the field and on ride-alongs.

According to Ahmed Rehab of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): "He was admitted to the post. He went through the training and the vetting and the selection process. Everything was hunky dory."

Everything was "hunky dory" until Steve Emerson alerted the State Police: "First I thought there was another Kifah Mustapha. I could not believe that it could have been the same Kifah Mustapha who was associated with a terrorist organization and who was listed a year just a year and a half ago and was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist case that the government won.” "His appointment in Illinois is one of the most shocking developments and demonstrations of government ineptitude that I have ever seen.”

A state police statement followed: "in early January, the ISP became aware that Mr. Mustapha was potentially identified as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. An immediate review of our background process began."

It didn’t take long for CAIR’s Ahmed Rehab to gin up the smear machine and use standard CAIR stylebook verbiage to attack: "Our concern is that the Illinois State Police is kowtowing to articles online published by notorious anti-Muslims who have been in the business of smearing Muslim activists leaders and Imams for the longest time."

And note what Ahmed Rehab does not say. He never once states that anything Emerson claims about Kifah Mustapha isn’t true. He does not deny the accuracy of any of Emerson’s statements because Emerson's statements are absolutely correct and Rehab knows it.

According to Emerson’s investigation, Kifah Mustapha is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and is, according to federal prosecutors, a fund-raiser for Hamas. While the federal prosecutors are right in that Hamas is “committed to the globalization of Islam and violent jihad”, much of the violence committed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas is unknown to the average American.

Kifah Mustapha is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case. However, Christina Abraham, CAIR’s civil rights director, had this to say about the unindicted co-conspirator list: "The unindicted co-conspirator list-which by the way is not usually made public by the Dept. of Justice and in this case for some inexplicable reason was. It is not a conviction.”

Abraham then describes Mustapha’s admission that he was a “registered agent for Holy Land Foundation in Illinois...soliciting money” until its closure by authorities: "It is essentially guilt by association.”

Christina Abraham is absolutely correct, it is guilt by association. When you promote, work for, speak on behalf of, a suspect organization, you shouldn’t be surprised when you receive extra scrutiny. When you associate with known terrorists, you shouldn’t be surprised if you are labeled one as well.

Abraham claims that the Illinois State Police have no “legal basis” to deny Mustapha the Chaplains position.

Really? The Illinois State Police do not have wide latitude on who may serve as a volunteer chaplain? Would Abraham care to file a lawsuit on behalf of Kifah Mustapha?

The better question might be, “Can Kifah Mustapha stand up to discovery?” The answer, if the history of political Islam in America is any guide, is “No, he can’t”.

CAIR and Kifah Mustapha won’t file a lawsuit because they can’t win.

Steve Emerson says it all: "The fact that a man who has been fully associated with an Islamic terrorist organization that specialized in suicide bombing is made chaplain of the state police in Illinois is absolutely horrifying.”

Indeed.

CAIR’s Ahmed Rehab see’s it another way: "It is very important to us that the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim community be based on mutual trust where the accepted leaders of this community do not have to be second guessed as a result of some notorious, dubious individual on the Internet.”

“Accepted leader” Kifah Mustapha? Keep in mind the countless victims of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and one has to wonder, just what is Kifah Mustapha the leader of, and what is the mindset of the people who fill the "community" Rehab refers to?

There is no second-guessing involved. Kifah Mustapha is what he is; a supporter of Islamic supremacist terror groups who promote or engage in assassination and terrorist bombings to advance their perverted Islamist principles. If CAIR can show otherwise, why not just take Steve Emerson to court and make him produce his facts?

Kifah Mustapha, a normally outspoken person, has asked CAIR to "speak for him" until this matter is resolved. Anti-CAIR strongly supports Mustapha's decision; we believe there is no better organization to speak on behalf of radical political Islamists in the United States than the Hamas supporting fascists of CAIR.

Kifah Mustapha’s decision to call in CAIR for support should skewer his chances of becoming a Chaplain for the Illinois State Police.

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By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ It can't have come as a surprise that one of the now entrenched myths about America—namely, its ongoing victimization of Muslims—should have been voiced again by a leading citizen of our myth-producing capital, Hollywood. The citizen was Tom Hanks, and the occasion his March interview in Time Magazine in which he declared that our battle with Japan in World War II was one of "racism and terror." And that, he noted, should remind us of our current wars.

The comments caused a furor. But Mr. Hanks, who had made them during a publicity tour—he's the producer of the HBO series, "The Pacific"—saw the issue in perfectly clear terms, which he went on to explain several times more in subsequent media appearances. We can only ponder the joy this must have brought to the hearts of HBO executives.

The Hanks mini-seminar was only one of the many distortions of our still unbearably raw recent history—never mind World War II—encouraging Americans to view themselves as oppressors and racists. The latest reflection of this trend, grown steadily since the attacks of Sept. 11, came with a three-page spread in the Washington Post on March 24 about the tribulations of a Muslim soldier who reported being subjected to slurs, various other insults, and also a threatening note. His commander suggested he might do well to move to housing off base. The base in question was Fort Hood, where, last November, army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 fellow American soldiers.

The pain of these confrontations was undoubtedly great, as such treatment always is. Ask the members of religious and racial minorities who served, say, in World War II, when it wasn't unusual to hear slurs like "kike" and such hurled at them. Ask black Americans who had the incomparably worse experience of serving in a racially segregated military, where they were relegated to the worst duties. Not to mention being made witness—in parts of the country—to the sight of German POWs held in the U.S. eating in restaurants barred to black Americans in uniform, and otherwise being accorded respect that those Americans could not hope to receive.

Still, there were no instances of those enduring this treatment undertaking mass murder of other American servicemen. There was rage, and there were some riots, but no cases of U.S. soldiers enlisting in the service of the enemy as Maj. Hasan had. (Hasan, it was explained after he had cut down those unarmed servicemen and women packed into that room in Ft. Hood, had suffered prejudice-related pressures as a Muslim in the armed services.)

There were, in World War II, no watchdog groups like the ones cited in the Washington Post story, no agencies keeping lists of harassment complaints, or name-calling suffered by members of the U.S. military, or of the number of soldiers, like those mentioned in the story, who called crying on the phone. There were back then plenty of officers given to convenient cover-ups. But, it's a good bet, few like Maj. Hasan's superiors—so addled by raised consciousness and worries about appearing insensitive to Muslims in the service that they ignored even the most extreme expressions of his enmity to the United States and its military, his praise of suicide bombers, his jihadi contacts.

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Maj. Nidal Hasan was the recipient of too much sympathy..Since the events of Sept. 11, we've seen the growth of a view that American Muslims became prime victims of those terror attacks—isolated, fearful, targets of hostility. President George W. Bush, who went to Washington D.C's Islamic Center a few days after the terror assaults, told his audience that Islam was about peace and warned that the nation's Muslims must be free to go about without fear or intimidation by other Americans—remarks he doubtless thought were called for under the circumstances.

It had not, of course, been necessary to remind Americans of who they were and were not. No menacing hordes, then or later, ever threatened American Muslims—and it has been an insult to the nation to have been lectured to the same way after every attempted terror attack, as though wild mobs of citizens might actually run through the streets attacking Muslims. Even as the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still smoldered, countless Americans had reached out to their Muslim neighbors to reassure them.

No matter. Every report of any activity bearing resemblance to anti-Muslim sentiment became, in short order, essential news. Every actual incident, every report of a nasty sign, fitted the all-consuming theme taken up by large sectors of mainstream media: that the country's Muslims were now hapless targets, not only of the national rage at the atrocities committed by Islamic fundamentalists, but also of racism. It was a view especially well in accord with those of a generation schooled in colleges and universities where pathological extremes of sensitivity to claims of racial, religious or sexual insult or charges of gender bias are considered perfectly normal and right.

Reporters ran with the theme in part because the media's appetite for victim stories of any kind is inexhaustible. But this was, in addition, the kind journalists pride themselves on as socially responsible. It was also one that didn't lack for willing subjects. For American Muslims in considerable numbers apparently subscribed to the view that theirs was the abiding suffering that had been inflicted by the 9/11 attacks. There was no missing the steady supply of Muslims available to tell inquiring reporters of their feelings of alienation and persecution.

Each FBI terrorist sting that went awry or seemed to, each wild goose chase of a home-grown jihadi threat, spurred a new portrait of besieged American Muslims. When such plots turned out to be true, and their threat enormous—most recently in the case of Najubullah Zazi, a jihadist who planned to set explosives off in the New York subway—the portrait and the theme remained the same. Since alienated American Muslims were forced to live in fear as second-class citizens, it was explained, more and more of them chose extremism and violence. In short, whether the charges of terrorist activity were false or whether they were true, American society was to blame.

There are other faces of Muslim America. Five years or so after the terrorists drove their planes and passengers into the twin towers and the Pentagon, a cab driver from Pakistan remarked, as we drove past the rubble where the towers had stood, that he could never pass this place without trying to see them again in his mind. A painful effort, for all that it brought back. What was not painful, he added, was the memory of certain people in his neighborhood—a mixed but mostly white area of Queens, with many Italian-Americans, some Jews, and he thought some Irish. After the attacks, some of the men had come to him.

"My wife doesn't go out without a head cover," he explained. The men had come to tell him that if anyone bothered her, or his family, he must come to them.

"I must tell them and must not be afraid. Do you know," he said, in a voice suddenly sharp, "what would have happened if Americans had done this kind of attack in my country? Every American—every Christian, every non-Muslim—would have been slaughtered, blood would have run in the streets. I know the kind of country this is. Thanks be to God I can give this to my children."

Countless American Muslims would, like generations of immigrants of all kinds, say the same. Theirs, of course, is not the face of Muslim America suitable for the continuing chronicle of the victimized American Muslim.

Ms. Rabinowitz, a member of the Journal's editorial board, is the author of "No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times" (Free Press, 2003).

This is just the sort of subject matter where Pravda on the Hudson (POTH) can be at its most deceptive. Still, the subject matter matters AND we do want good Muslim-Americans treated fairly. Nonetheless, caveat lector-- its POTH at work:====================

White House Quietly Courts Muslims in U.S.By ANDREA ELLIOTTPublished: April 18, 2010When President Obama took the stage in Cairo last June, promising a new relationship with the Islamic world, Muslims in America wondered only half-jokingly whether the overture included them. After all, Mr. Obama had kept his distance during the campaign, never visiting an American mosque and describing the false claim that he was Muslim as a “smear” on his Web site.

Tariq Ramadan, who was barred from the United States under President George W. Bush, spoke to a New York audience in April. Nearly a year later, Mr. Obama has yet to set foot in an American mosque. And he still has not met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders. But less publicly, his administration has reached out to this politically isolated constituency in a sustained and widening effort that has left even skeptics surprised.

Muslim and Arab-American advocates have participated in policy discussions and received briefings from top White House aides and other officials on health care legislation, foreign policy, the economy, immigration and national security. They have met privately with a senior White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to discuss civil liberties concerns and counterterrorism strategy.

The impact of this continuing dialogue is difficult to measure, but White House officials cited several recent government actions that were influenced, in part, by the discussions. The meeting with Ms. Napolitano was among many factors that contributed to the government’s decision this month to end a policy subjecting passengers from 14 countries, most of them Muslim, to additional scrutiny at airports, the officials said.

That emergency directive, enacted after a failed Dec. 25 bombing plot, has been replaced with a new set of intelligence-based protocols that law enforcement officials consider more effective.

Also this month, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim academic, visited the United States for the first time in six years after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed a decision by the Bush administration, which had barred Mr. Ramadan from entering the country, initially citing the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Mrs. Clinton also cleared the way for another well-known Muslim professor, Adam Habib, who had been denied entry under similar circumstances.

Arab-American and Muslim leaders said they had yet to see substantive changes on a variety of issues, including what they describe as excessive airport screening, policies that have chilled Muslim charitable giving and invasive F.B.I. surveillance guidelines. But they are encouraged by the extent of their consultation by the White House and governmental agencies.

“For the first time in eight years, we have the opportunity to meet, engage, discuss, disagree, but have an impact on policy,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. “We’re being made to feel a part of that process and that there is somebody listening.”

In the post-9/11 era, Muslims and Arab-Americans have posed something of a conundrum for the government: they are seen as a political liability but also, increasingly, as an important partner in countering the threat of homegrown terrorism. Under President George W. Bush, leaders of these groups met with government representatives from time to time, but said they had limited interaction with senior officials. While Mr. Obama has yet to hold the kind of high-profile meeting that Muslims and Arab-Americans seek, there is a consensus among his policymakers that engagement is no longer optional.

The administration’s approach has been understated. Many meetings have been private; others were publicized only after the fact. A visit to New York University in February by John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, drew little news coverage, but caused a stir among Muslims around the country. Speaking to Muslim students, activists and others, Mr. Brennan acknowledged many of their grievances, including “surveillance that has been excessive,” “overinclusive no-fly lists” and “an unhelpful atmosphere around many Muslim charities.”

“These are challenges we face together as Americans,” said Mr. Brennan, who momentarily showed off his Arabic to hearty applause. He and other officials have made a point of disassociating Islam from terrorism in public comments, using the phrase “violent extremism” in place of words like “jihad” and “Islamic terrorism.”

While the administration’s solicitation of Muslims and Arab-Americans has drawn little fanfare, it has not escaped criticism. A small but vocal group of research analysts, bloggers and others complain that the government is reaching out to Muslim leaders and organizations with an Islamist agenda or ties to extremist groups abroad.

They point out that Ms. Jarrett gave the keynote address at the annual convention for the Islamic Society of North America. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity whose leaders were convicted in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas. The society denies any links to terrorism.

“I think dialogue is good, but it has to be with genuine moderates,” said Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst who advises government officials. “These are the wrong groups to legitimize.” Mr. Emerson and others have also objected to the political appointments of several American Muslims, including Rashad Hussain.

In February, the president chose Mr. Hussain, a 31-year-old White House lawyer, to become the United States’ special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The position, a kind of ambassador at large to Muslim countries, was created by Mr. Bush. In a video address, Mr. Obama highlighted Mr. Hussain’s status as a “close and trusted member of my White House staff” and “a hafiz,” a person who has memorized the Koran.

Within days of the announcement, news reports surfaced about comments Mr. Hussain had made on a panel in 2004, while he was a student at Yale Law School, in which he referred to several domestic terrorism prosecutions as “politically motivated.” Among the cases he criticized was that of Sami Al-Arian, a former computer-science professor in Florida who pleaded guilty to aiding members of a Palestinian terrorist group.

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At first, the White House said Mr. Hussain did not recall making the comments, which had been removed from the Web version of a 2004 article published by a small Washington magazine. When Politico obtained a recording of the panel, Mr. Hussain acknowledged criticizing the prosecutions but said he believed the magazine quoted him inaccurately, prompting him to ask its editor to remove the comments. On Feb. 22, The Washington Examiner ran an editorial with the headline “Obama Selects a Voice of Radical Islam.”

Muslim leaders watched carefully as the story migrated to Fox News. They had grown accustomed to close scrutiny, many said in interviews, but were nonetheless surprised. In 2008, Mr. Hussain had co-authored a paper for the Brookings Institution arguing that the government should use the peaceful teachings of Islam to fight terrorism. “Rashad Hussain is about as squeaky clean as you get,” said Representative Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who is Muslim. Mr. Ellison and others wondered whether the administration would buckle under the pressure and were relieved when the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, defended Mr. Hussain.

“The fact that the president and the administration have appointed Muslims to positions and have stood by them when they’ve been attacked is the best we can hope for,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America.

It was notably different during Mr. Obama’s run for office. In June 2008, volunteers of his campaign barred two Muslim women in headscarves from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit, eliciting widespread criticism. The campaign promptly recruited Mazen Asbahi, a 36-year-old corporate lawyer and popular Muslim activist from Chicago, to become its liaison to Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Bloggers began researching Mr. Asbahi’s background. For a brief time in 2000, he had sat on the board of an Islamic investment fund, along with Sheikh Jamal Said, a Chicago imam who was later named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Mr. Asbahi said in an interview that he had left the board after three weeks because he wanted no association with the imam.

Shortly after his appointment to the Obama campaign, Mr. Asbahi said, a Wall Street Journal reporter began asking questions about his connection to the imam. Campaign officials became concerned that news coverage would give critics ammunition to link the imam to Mr. Obama, Mr. Asbahi recalled. On their recommendation, Mr. Asbahi agreed to resign from the campaign, he said.

He is still unsettled by the power of his detractors. “To be in the midst of this campaign of change and hope and to have it stripped away over nothing,” he said. “It hurts.”

From the moment Mr. Obama took office, he seemed eager to change the tenor of America’s relationship with Muslims worldwide. He gave his first interview to Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language television station based in Dubai. Muslims cautiously welcomed his ban on torture and his pledge to close Guantánamo within a year. In his Cairo address, he laid out his vision for “a new beginning” with Muslims: while America would continue to fight terrorism, he said, terrorism would no longer define America’s approach to Muslims.

Back at home, Muslim and Arab-American leaders remained skeptical. But they took note when, a few weeks later, Mohamed Magid, a prominent imam from Sterling, Va., and Rami Nashashibi, a Muslim activist from Chicago, joined the president at a White-House meeting about fatherhood. Also that month, Dr. Faisal Qazi, a board member of American Muslim Health Professionals, began meeting with administration officials to discuss health care reform.

The invitations were aimed at expanding the government’s relationship with Muslims and Arab-Americans to areas beyond security, said Mr. Hussain, the White House’s special envoy. Mr. Hussain began advising the president on issues related to Islam after joining the White House counsel’s office in January 2009. He helped draft Mr. Obama’s Cairo speech and accompanied him on the trip. “The president realizes that you cannot engage one-fourth of the world’s population based on the erroneous beliefs of a fringe few,” Mr. Hussain said.

Other government offices followed the lead of the White House. In October, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with Arab-Americans and Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., to discuss challenges facing small-business owners. Also last fall, Farah Pandith was sworn in as the State Department’s first special representative to Muslim communities. While Ms. Pandith works mostly with Muslims abroad, she said she had also consulted with American Muslims because Mrs. Clinton believes “they can add value overseas.”

Despite this, American actions abroad — including civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and the failure to close Guantánamo — have drawn the anger of Muslims and Arab-Americans.

Even though their involvement with the administration has broadened, they remain most concerned about security-related policies. In January, when the Department of Homeland Security hosted a two-day meeting with Muslim, Arab-American, South Asian and Sikh leaders, the group expressed concern about the emergency directive subjecting passengers from a group of Muslim countries to additional screening.

Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, pointed out that the policy would never have caught the attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid, who is British. “It almost sends the signal that the government is going to treat nationals of powerless countries differently from countries that are powerful,” Ms. Khera recalled saying as community leaders around the table nodded their heads.

Ms. Napolitano, who sat with the group for more than an hour, committed to meeting with them more frequently. Ms. Khera said she left feeling somewhat hopeful.

They took their places in the wood-paneled courtroom, 58 people from 32 countries. They listened as a federal magistrate banged the gavel and said it was “a wonderful day for the United States”— the day they would become Americans.

The magistrate talked about Thomas Jefferson and told the group that they could run for office — only the presidency and the vice presidency were off limits, according to a tape recording of the proceedings in a Bridgeport, Conn., courtroom last year, on April 17. On her instructions, they raised their right hands and repeated the oath of citizenship. One man in the group was the Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, whose father or grandfather was a Pakistani military official and who, at 29, had spent a decade in the United States, collecting a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and landing a job with a Connecticut financial marketing company.

He had obtained citizenship through marriage to a woman who was born in Colorado — the authorities say she and their two young children are still in Pakistan, where they believe he was trained in making bombs last year in Waziristan, a tribal area that is a haven for militants.

On Saturday, the authorities said, Mr. Shahzad drove a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives and detonators, leaving it in Times Square.

About 7 p.m., as a robot from the bomb squad was being summoned to the S.U.V., Mr. Shahzad called his landlord from the train to Connecticut and said he had lost his keys; in a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday, the authorities said the keys had been locked inside the Pathfinder.

The landlord met him at the apartment that night to let him in. “He looked nervous,” said the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, who had rented him a two-bedroom apartment in Bridgeport since Feb. 15. “But I thought, of course he’s nervous, he just lost his keys.”

In nearly a dozen years in this country, Mr. Shahzad had gone to school, held steady jobs, bought and sold real estate, and kept his immigration status in good order, giving no sign to those he interacted with that he had connections to terrorists in Pakistan. Nor was there any indication that he would try to wreak havoc in one of the world’s most crowded places, Times Square.

His neighbors in Connecticut said the things neighbors always say about someone who suddenly turns up in the headlines — he was quiet, he was polite, he went jogging late at night. Like so many others, he lost a house to foreclosure — a real estate broker who helped him buy the house, in Shelton, Conn., in 2004 remembered that Mr. Shahzad did not like President George W. Bush or the Iraq war.

“I didn’t take it for much,” said the broker, Igor Djuric, “because around that time not many people did.”

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”

Mr. Shahzad was born in Pakistan in 1979, though there is some confusion over where. Officials in Pakistan said it was in Nowshera, an area in northern Pakistan known for its Afghan refugee camps. But on a university application that Mr. Shahzad had filled out and that was found in the maggot-covered garbage outside the Shelton house on Tuesday, he listed Karachi.

Pakistani officials said Mr. Shahzad was either a son or a grandson of Baharul Haq, who retired as a vice air marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority.

A Pakistani official said Mr. Shahzad might have had affiliations with Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant linked to Al Qaeda who was formerly associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an anti-India militant group once nurtured by the Pakistani state. But friends said the family was well respected and nonpolitical.

“Neither Faisal nor his family has ever had any links with any jihadist or religious organization,” one friend said. Another, a lawyer, said that “the family is in a state of shock,” adding, “They believe that their son has been implicated in a fake case.”

Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as “Kashmiri.”

Mr. Shahzad’s generation grew up in a Pakistan where alcohol had been banned and Islam had been forced into schools and communities as a doctrine and a national glue.

Born Muslim in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, fleeing to the Netherlands at the age of 22 to escape an arranged marriage. Ten years later, she was elected to the Dutch parliament. A prominent feminist and critic of Islam, she received numerous death threats when she renounced her faith following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2004, Theo van Gogh, the director of a short film she wrote protesting Islam’s treatment of women, was murdered in Amsterdam by a Muslim extremist who threatened that she would be next. Since 2007, the bestselling author of Infidel, a memoir, has lived in the U.S., where she is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. In her new book, Nomad, Hirsi Ali writes about her struggle to assimilate into Western society and proposes remedies to help other immigrants resist the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism.

Q: Are you, after eight years with a security detail, inured to death threats? It’s hard to imagine you could continue to function if you felt constant fear. A: It’s not a great way of leading your life, but like everything else, you get used to it. Presidents, members of royal families, diplomats—anybody who’s subjected to live under a security protocol does function. And I’m not the only one [with a fatwa]. There’s a whole class of people who live this way. I think, look, they can kill me physically—or I could die of a heart attack or whatever. Life is short. What they cannot kill are my ideas. The fact my books have been published and are out there—there are limits to silencing.

Q: Journalists frequently comment on your courage. Is “brave” how you think of yourself? A: No. I think of all of us as being potential victims of the jihadist threat. I mean, look at the Times Square attack that was foiled. If it had succeeded, and on that Saturday night you were going to the theatre, you would’ve been injured if not killed. It’s not a question of who’s brave and who’s not, it’s an attack we all are under. Every time you take a train, step into your car, walk into the shopping mall, go to the airport—every single time, something could happen. That’s how terrorism works.

Q: You view the West as being at war not only with terrorists but with Islam itself. Who do you think will win?A: The West will be victorious because the ideas of life are just far superior to the ideas of death. The question is what price we want to pay to win. How many people should die before victory? How much money and resources should we spend? We’re just not being effective now because we are being nice and avoiding the subject of Islam. We need to talk about Islam, about what’s in the Quran. The debate right now among Westerners is very defensive; all people want to prove is that they’re not Islamophobes.

Q: Consequently, according to Paul Berman in his new book The Flight of the Intellectuals, you’ve received “dreadful treatment” from, and have been trivialized by, the intelligentsia. Do you agree? A: He’s addressing a debate within liberalism. He is, just like me and I think many others, surprised—and that’s an understatement—that some liberals choose to defend ideas that are very illiberal and choose to look away from practices that are even more illiberal. Why are they excusing radical Islam? That fascinates Berman and it also fascinates me, what the presence of Islam does to the liberal psyche in the West.

Q: What does Islam do to the liberal psyche? A: Confuses it. The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals. They’ve convinced themselves that the best way to do that in general is to defend the cultures that are non-white. But what they forget, and what they’re being confronted with, is that non-white cultures contain misogynistic, collectivist, tribal, gay-unfriendly and female-hostile traditions. And so they’re confused: on the one hand, they’re looking at minorities as groups they need to save and speak up for, and on the other hand, they’re confronted with the ideas and practices of individuals within those minorities that are very undemocratic and appalling, really.

Q: You believe there is no such thing as moderate Islam. If that’s true, why do so many Muslims in the West say they’re horrified by violence perpetrated in the name of Islam? A: I haven’t heard anybody say they’re horrified. Just to compare, many Americans, Canadians and Europeans protested the war on Iraq; they gathered themselves, they sent lots of emails, there was a lot of activism, they marched against this war. I haven’t seen that kind of thing from Muslims saying, “We’re against the numerous terrorist attacks all over the world carried out in the name of Islam.” No marches, no organizations, nothing. There are individuals, like Irshad Manji, like me, born into Islam, who stand up and say, “Hey, we don’t like this.” But we haven’t seen any kind of institutionalized protest by Muslims. That is the big question mark: are Muslims silent because they agree with the terrorist attacks? Or because they don’t know how to express themselves?

Q: One of your arguments in Nomad is that European countries have enabled homegrown jihadists by not insisting Muslims assimilate. I assume you support the proposed burka bans in Belgium and France? A: I think to demand to cover your face in a public place in an era of terrorism is preposterous. For the French government, and other governments, to say, “You can wear whatever you like, but we would like to see your face”—I think that’s reasonable. I’m not talking about the face covering as a manifestation of religion, just in terms of safety. Every time I go through an airport I have to remove my shoes, my belt, my coat. After the attempted underwear bombing in the name of Islam, we have to go through a machine that scans us. So for someone to come around from that religion and say, “I demand that I cover myself”—it’s unreal.

Q: Are Muslims in North America better assimilated than in Europe? A: Yes and no. Economically and in terms of education, yes. But I haven’t seen any hard data to prove that Canadian and American Muslims are more patriotic than Dutch and German Muslims.

Q: Do you think Barack Obama has moved the U.S. forward in terms of engaging constructively with Muslim countries?A: Muslim populations and countries don’t like us any more than they did under Bush. In Obama’s administration so far, there have been more terrorist attempts than under eight years of the Bush administration, not including the 9/11 attack. The problem is clearly growing. The argument of, “Okay, they do this because they are poor”—that doesn’t apply anymore. In Western democracies, the young men wanting to kill themselves and kill others to get to the Muslim paradise are middle-class, well-educated and have the potential for a good future. The argument that Muslims are persecuted in North America is also not true. Muslims want to be in North America; they get jobs, they can have businesses and live wherever they want. If you just look at that argument empirically, you see that Muslims lead a life that is free and they can do whatever they want. As you go through these arguments, you see it’s not really about which administration is in the White House, it’s about convictions, not just the convictions of individuals but of states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, which have, as their constitution, the Quran.

Q: One of your more startling arguments in Nomad is that Christian churches should proselytize in immigrant communities to try to convert Muslims.A: Look at the amount of money Saudi Arabia spends on coming into Muslim communities in America and Europe, building schools and also taking leaders and training them in Mecca and Medina, then replanting them. It’s surprising that no other group of people is targeting the same communities. If you look at Western civilization, at the institutions [and movements] that were engaged in changing people’s hearts and minds—the Christian Church, humanists, feminists—they are doing next to nothing in these Muslim communities. When I was in Holland [recently], I heard about a Christian mission that had been proselytizing in Morocco. The government kicked them out and sent them back to Holland. I thought, “You don’t have to stop proselytizing—just go to the Muslim community in Amsterdam west and carry on there.” But of course there, they’re not only going to face the radical Muslims as opponents, they’re also going to face the multicultural opponents, saying they’re not supposed to be telling people to leave their religion.

Q: So how would they do it? A: Next to every mosque, build a Christian centre, an enlightenment centre, a feminist centre. There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites—Christian, feminist, humanist—trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.

Q: But you also argue that children are indoctrinated very early in Islam. How would you even get them to listen to such a message? A: They only get indoctrinated if they go to Muslim schools. I would, if I had the power, abolish Muslim schools. Children born to Muslim parents in North America or anywhere else in the West would get Islamic teachings at home, which is fine. But when they go to school, they would get the regular education that’s going to enable them to be absorbed into our society and become law-abiding, well-established citizens.

Q: In a multicultural and democratic society, how could we ban Muslim schools? A: It depends how we weigh this problem of jihadism and terrorism. If we think it’s a chronic disease we have to live with, and I think that is actually the dominant opinion, people will take more trouble to look at what is going on in these schools and abolish them. If we think of these children as kids who, when they finish school, will be hostile to our society, then I can compile a whole host of arguments why they can and should be abolished.

Q: Let me ask a question you once posed. You said, “Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you?”A: That is the big question for the open society today. We want to be distinct from closed societies, have less authoritarianism, allow people to make their own choices. And what we’re seeing now is that as far as that applies to an Islamic subset of society, there are other factors at work that are frightening. To have a whole generation of people just indoctrinated with this jidhadist mentality and for us to do nothing about it, and then every time there’s a terrorist attack, we panic—it’s not viable.

Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.(Marc: He is the author of two outstanding books on evolutionary biology/psychology: The Moral Animal and Non-Zero Sum)

Just to show you how naïve I am: When I first heard about the plan to build a mosque and community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, I didn’t envision any real opposition to it.

Sure, I can understand how some people traumatized by 9/11 — firefighters who survived it, or people whose loved ones didn’t — might not like the idea. But I’d have thought that opinion leaders of all ideological stripes could reach consensus by applying a basic rule of thumb: Just ask, “What would Osama bin Laden want?” and then do the opposite.

Bin Laden would love to be able to say that in America you can build a church or synagogue anywhere you want, but not a mosque. That fits perfectly with his recruiting pitch — that America has declared war on Islam. And bin Laden would thrill to the claim that a mosque near ground zero dishonors the victims of 9/11, because the unspoken premise is that the attacks really were, as he claims, a valid expression of Islam.

Apparently I was wrong. Two New York politicians — Representative Peter King and Rick Lazio, a candidate for governor — are ginning up opposition to the project, as is the Weekly Standard.

Their strategy is to ask dark questions about the motivations behind the project (known as Park51 because of its address on Park Place). Those motivations reside in an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement, the project’s co-sponsors. So far as I can tell, Rauf is a good person who genuinely wants to build a more peaceful world. (I met him briefly last year at a venue where we had both been asked to give talks about compassion — his from an Islamic perspective, mine from a secular perspective. Here’s the talk he gave.)

But if you think Rauf’s good intentions are going to keep him safe from the Weekly Standard, you underestimate that magazine’s creative powers. Its latest issue features an article about Park51 chock full of angles that never would have occurred to me if some magazine had asked me to write an assessment of the project’s ideological underpinnings. For example: Rauf’s wife, who often speaks in support of the project and during one talk reflected proudly on her Islamic heritage, “failed to mention another feature of her background: She is the niece of Dr. Farooq Khan, formerly a leader of the Westbury Mosque on Long Island, which is a center for Islamic radicals and links on its Web site to the paramilitary Islamic Circle of North America (I.C.N.A.), the front on American soil for the Pakistani jihadist Jamaat e-Islami.”

Got that? Rauf’s wife has an uncle who used to be “a leader” of a mosque that now has a Web site that links to the Web site of an allegedly radical organization. (I’ll get back to the claim that the Westbury Mosque is itself a “center for Islamic radicals.”)

The odd thing is that the author of this piece, Stephen Schwartz, is a self-described neoconservative whose parents were, by his own account, communists. You’d think he might harbor doubts about how confidently we can infer people’s ideologies from the ideologies of their older relatives. You’d also think he might disdain McCarthyite guilt-by-association tactics.

You’d be wrong. Schwartz’s piece goes on and on, weaving webs of association so engrossing that you have to keep reminding yourself that they have nothing to do with Rauf. At one point Schwartz spends several paragraphs damning someone whose connection to Park51 seems to consist of having spoken favorably about it.

If we are going to stigmatize everyone who in any sense supports Hamas, we are going to be tarring with a pretty broad brush..As for the views of Rauf himself: In Schwartz’s universe, Rauf’s expressions of opposition to terrorism are themselves grounds for suspicion. Rauf, says Schwartz, has “cloaked the Cordoba effort in the rhetoric of reconciliation, describing himself and his colleagues as ‘the anti-terrorists.’”

Rauf has been the imam at a Manhattan mosque for a quarter of a century, so you’d think that, if he actually had radical views, there would be some evidence of that by now. Just to give you some idea of what solid evidence of radicalism looks like: Representative King, who shares the Weekly Standard’s grave suspicions about Rauf, supported the Irish Republican Army back when it was killing lots of innocent civilians. He raised money for the I.R.A. and said it was “the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland” and praised the “brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry” and in various other ways backed this terrorist group. If Rauf’s past looked like King’s past, there would indeed be cause for concern.

A big question when reading any Weekly Standard piece about nefarious Muslims is: What is the operative definition of “radical”? This question is worth spending some time on, because if the Standard is defining the term loosely, then the six-degrees-of-separation chains it uses to link people to radicalism are even less relevant than they seem.

Apparently one Weekly Standard criterion for radicalism is support for Hamas. Thus, Schwartz notes that the real estate developer for the project has a business partner who has an uncle (you still with us?) who dramatically affirmed his support for Hamas after the recent blockade-running flotilla incident.

Now, there are a lot of Arabs and Muslims, including Americans, who don’t consider Hamas evil incarnate. You might divide Hamas “supporters” into two camps:

“Hard” supporters say that Palestinians were wrongly dispossessed of their land six decades ago and that brutal tactics are therefore warranted. So what I call a terrorist they consider a freedom fighter.

“Soft” supporters may not approve of all Hamas tactics, but they note the following: In 2006, Hamas, with American and Israeli approval, participated in a Palestinian election and won — and, right after this victory, there were signs that Hamas might be willing to abandon terrorism, at least provisionally. But Israel and the United States decided that, while it was fine for Hamas to participate in elections, winning was unacceptable, and Hamas wouldn’t be allowed to govern. So Hamas seized control of Gaza, and Israel then subjected the people of Gaza to a crippling economic blockade (which, even after the post-flotilla “loosening,” doesn’t let Gaza export anything to speak of). Forced to choose between Israel and Hamas in this standoff, these “soft” supporters side with Hamas.

I can see how Israelis would have a different view of Hamas, which not so long ago pursued a concerted strategy of killing Israeli civilians, and could revive that strategy any day and still hasn’t accepted Israel’s right to exist. It’s understandable that Israelis hate Hamas, and Americans, including the people at the Weekly Standard, have every right to share this hatred.

Still, the point is that, whether the Weekly Standard likes it or not, there are a number of Arabs and Muslims, including Americans, who in one sense or another support Hamas and who aren’t dangerously radical from an American perspective; they didn’t support the 9/11 attacks or the Fort Hood shooting or the would-be underwear bombing. So if we are going to stigmatize everyone who in any sense supports Hamas — or even associates with someone whose uncle supports Hamas — we are going to be tarring with a pretty broad brush, excluding from a crucial American dialogue too many people for the dialogue to be productive. (Thomas Friedman recently made a similar argument in criticizing CNN’s reflexive firing of an editor who tweeted something favorable about a leader of Hezbollah after he died.)

So when Schwartz asserts that a Long Island mosque is a “center for Islamic radicals,” I personally have to suspend judgment until I hear from someone who has researched the matter and has a more useful definition of radicalism than Schwartz does. Meanwhile, I’ll just remind myself that this mosque has nothing to do with Rauf anyway.

One thing Peter King and Rick Lazio demand is that Rauf unequivocally denounce Hamas. In other words, they want him to go beyond just not being a professed supporter of Hamas and, in effect, criticize everyone who supports Hamas in even the “soft” sense.

No doubt Osama bin Laden, if apprised of the situation, would hope that Rauf will cave in to these demands and ritually denounce Hamas. Because the Muslims who are most vulnerable to bin Laden’s recruiting pitch are, it’s safe to say, at least somewhat sympathetic to Hamas. And if moderate Muslims like Rauf can be pressured into adopting Israel’s position, and thus be depicted by truly radical Muslims as Zionist tools, that will make them less effective in their tug of war with bin Laden for the hearts and minds of the vulnerable.

Pathetically, Rick Lazio seems to have made his demand for an “investigation” into Park51 the centerpiece-du-jour of his gubernatorial campaign. Happily, Mayor Bloomberg has shown true moral leadership and opposed Lazio’s demands in clear language. “Government should never — never — be in the business of telling people how they should pray, or where they can pray,” Bloomberg said last week. “We want to make sure that everybody from around the world feels comfortable coming here, living here and praying the way they want to pray.” Amen.

An influential Jewish organization on Friday announced its opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan, intensifying a fierce national debate about the limits of religious freedom and the meaning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The decision by the group, the Anti-Defamation League, touched off angry reactions from a range of religious groups, which argued that the country would show its tolerance and values by welcoming the center near the site where radical Muslims killed about 2,750 people.

But the unexpected move by the ADL, a mainstream group that has denounced what it saw as bigoted attacks on plans for the Muslim center, could well be a turning point in the battle over the project.

In New York, where ground zero has slowly blended back into the fabric of the city, government officials appear poised to approve plans for the sprawling complex, which would have as many as 15 stories and would house a prayer space, a performing arts center, a pool and a restaurant.

But around the country opposition is mounting, fueled in part by Republican leaders and conservative pundits. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, has urged “peace-seeking Muslims” to reject the center, branding it an “unnecessary provocation.” A Republican political action committee has produced a television commercial assailing the proposal. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has decried it in speeches.

The complex’s rapid evolution from a local zoning dispute into a national referendum highlights the intense and unsettled emotions that still surround the World Trade Center site nine years after the attacks.

To many New Yorkers, especially in Manhattan, it is a construction zone, passed during the daily commute or glimpsed through office windows. To some outside of the city, though, it stands as a hallowed battlefield that must be shielded and memorialized.

Those who are fighting the project argue that building a house of Muslim worship so close to ground zero is at best an affront to the families of those who died there and at worst an act of aggression that would, they say, mark the place where radical Islam achieved a blow against the United States.

“The World Trade Center is the largest loss of American life on our soil since the Civil War,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And we have not rebuilt it, which drives people crazy. And in that setting, we are told, why don’t we have a 13-story mosque and community center?”

He added: “The average American just thinks this is a political statement. It’s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.”

Several family members of victims at the World Trade Center have weighed in against the plan, saying it would desecrate what amounts to a graveyard. “When I look over there and see a mosque, it’s going to hurt,” C. Lee Hanson, whose son, Peter, was killed in the attacks, said at a recent public hearing. “Build it someplace else.”

Those who support it seem mystified and flustered by the heated opposition. They contend that the project, with an estimated cost of $100 million, is intended to span the divide between Muslim and non-Muslim, not widen it.

Oz Sultan, the programming director for the center, said the complex was based on Jewish community centers and Y.M.C.A.’s in Manhattan. It is to have a board composed of Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders and is intended to create a national model of moderate Islam.

“We are looking to build bridges between faiths,” Mr. Sultan said in an interview.

City officials, particularly Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have forcefully defended the project on the grounds of religious freedom, saying that government has no place dictating where a house of worship is located. The local community board has given overwhelming backing to the project, and the city’s landmarks commission is expected to do the same on Tuesday.

“What is great about America, and particularly New York, is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?” Mr. Bloomberg asked recently.

“Democracy is stronger than this,” he added. “And for us to just say no is just, I think — not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it.”

Still, the arguments against the Muslim center appear to be resonating. Polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose building it near ground zero.

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Resistance is particularly strong among some national Republican leaders. In stump speeches, Twitter messages and op-ed articles, they have turned angry denunciations of the plan into a political rallying cry that they say has surprising potency.

The two major Republican candidates for governor of New York, Rick A. Lazio and Carl Paladino, are making it a central issue in their campaigns, attacking the state’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, who is also the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, for not aggressively investigating the project’s finances..

In North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, a former Marine and a Republican candidate for Congress, has also campaigned on the issue, and says it is stirring voters in his rural district, some 600 miles away from ground zero.

A few days ago, at a roadside pizza shop in the small town of Salemburg, he attacked the proposal before an enthusiastic crowd of hog farmers and military veterans.

“Uniformly, there was disgust and disdain in the room for the idea,” Mr. Pantano said.

The issue was wrenching for the Anti-Defamation League, which in the past has spoken out against anti-Islamic sentiment. But its national director, Abraham H. Foxman, said in an interview on Friday that the organization came to the conclusion that the location was offensive to families of victims of Sept. 11, and he suggested that the center’s backers should look for a site “a mile away.”

“It’s the wrong place,” Mr. Foxman said. “Find another place.”

Asked why the opposition of the families was so pivotal in the decision, Mr. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said they were entitled to their emotions.

“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” he said. Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”

“The ADL should be ashamed of itself,” said Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, which promotes interethnic and interfaith dialogue. Speaking of the imam behind the proposed center, Feisal Abdul Rauf, he said, “Here, we ask the moderate leaders of the Muslim community to step forward, and when one of them does, he is treated with suspicion.”

C. Welton Gaddy, the president of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington group that emphasizes religious freedom, called the decision “disappointing,” and said he read about it “with a great deal of sorrow.”

On Friday, Mr. Sultan, the programming director for the proposed Muslim center, expressed surprise and sadness at the news. Told of Mr. Foxman’s remarks about the families of Sept. 11 victims, he said, “That response is just not well thought out.” He said that Muslims had also died on Sept. 11, either because they worked in the twin towers, or responded to the scene.

“The ADL has always been antibigotry,” he said. “This just does not seem consistent with their message.”

If you are a minority in a country with a majority that has some issues with your outlook on life, you do not do provocative things, unless.......... If we (for example) blew up the Taj Mahal and wanted to build a church on/ near the site, regardless of culture, we know that would be inflammatory to the local population right? It would be a way for the religious folks to stake a flag "Don't mess with Jesus" wouldn't it? If there was land available on the other end of town, cheaper we could build on? If we had to enlist local leaders to try and use psychobable for this to work?

If it looks fishy looking through your side of the looking glass...............

If you are really about building bridges, you would accept that discretion may gain you more in the long run. Exposure to your religion in an atmosphere that would allow for a more open mindset, rather than one that tends to close it. (A shinto shrine built on the shore next to the Arizona?! riiigghhhtt.....)